autres publications Gouvernance Normes d'encadrement
Comparer la gouvernance d’entreprise : étude de Martin Gelter
Ivan Tchotourian 4 août 2016
Martin Gelter (professeur à Fordham) nous offre un très bel article « Comparative Corporate Governance: Old and New » pour le compte de l’ECGI (Law Working Paper No. 321/2016). Si vous vous intéressez à la comparaison en matière de gouvernance d’entreprise, c’est un incontournable !
The most fundamental comparative corporate governance debates have often focused on two issues.
The first one concerns ownership structure: Why are large corporations in some corporate governance system owned by a multitude of disempowered shareholders, thus effectively giving management free rein? Why are corporations typically governed by a controlling shareholder or a coalition of controlling shareholders in other systems?
The second issue is the role of other ‘constituencies’ of the corporation besides shareholders, of which labor is most central to the debate. Some jurisdictions explicitly give labor an influential voice in corporate affairs, whereas in others its influence is developed through factual power or unintended consequences of legislation.
This chapter explores the interactions between firm ownership and labor, focusing on the United States on the one hand and Continental Europe, particularly Germany, on the other. It distinguishes between ‘old’ and ‘new’ comparative corporate governance, the former referring to the dichotomy studied by scholars of comparative corporate law up to the early 2000s. Recent changes, heralded by intermediated, but widespread share ownership are leading us to a new equilibrium whose contours have only begun to emerge.
Over the past decades, outside investors have gained power both in the United States and in Continental Europe. However, neither in the US nor in Continental Europe has the traditional corporate governance system been completely superseded by a new one. The US remains to a large extent manager-centric. Continental Europe retains powerful large shareholders, and labor as an independent force has remained more important than in the United States. Outside institutional investors – sometimes from the US – have become a player to be reckoned with, thus adding an additional layer of complexity to the system.
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Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial normes de droit objectifs de l'entreprise
Actionnaires-investisseurs et dirigeants : des tensions (exemple du droit)
Ivan Tchotourian 30 juillet 2016
La Cour de cassation a donné raison à Eurazeo qui avait licencié pour faute lourde, donc sans droit à indemnités de rupture, Philippe Guillemot, ancien patron d’Europcar… Depuis la crise financière de 2008, les fonds se posent en investisseurs « actifs ».
Les conflits entre les fonds d’investissement actionnaires des entreprises et leurs dirigeants sont courants dans les LBO (rachats d’entreprise par la dette) et, depuis la crise financière de 2008, les premiers n’hésitent plus à évincer les seconds quand les résultats ne sont pas au rendez-vous.
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Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial Gouvernance mission et composition du conseil d'administration normes de droit rémunération
Say on pay ? Avis du Club des juristes
Ivan Tchotourian 24 juillet 2016
Capusle-vidéo et article d’Aurélien Hamelle (membre du Club des juristes) portant sur le thème suivant : « Say on pay ? L’actionnaire et la société, le contrat ou l’institution ».
Le projet de loi « Sapin 2 » , en cours de discussion parlementaire, pourrait, si l’Assemblée Nationale maintient sa position, introduire un nouvel article L.225-37-2 au Code de commerce afin de soumettre à l’approbation de l’assemblée générale des actionnaires les éléments de rémunération des dirigeants de sociétés cotées.
Cette initiative parlementaire oublie toutefois que le droit des sociétés est marqué par une logique institutionnelle tenant compte des intérêts des diverses parties prenantes, les fameux stakeholders.
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Ivan Tchotourian
autres publications mission et composition du conseil d'administration Normes d'encadrement Nouvelles diverses place des salariés
Système allemand de codétermination : un modèle exportable ?
Ivan Tchotourian 22 juillet 2016
Alors que Theresa May a fait part de son intérêt d’importer en Grande-Bretagne le système allemand, MM. Horst Eidenmüller, Mathias Habersack, Caspar Behme et Lars Klöhn reviennent sur la pertinence de cette proposition en jetant un regard prudent (de chercheurs !) sur ce système : « Corporate Co-Determination German-Style as a Model for the UK? » (18 juillet 2016).
On 13 July 2016, Theresa May took up office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Only shortly before, she had made headlines when she proposed to adopt European-style worker representation on the boards of leading companies.
Corporate co-determination hence seems to gain a certain degree of popularity with the British government – which is highly astonishing, considering that it was the UK which most fiercely fought against co-determination on a European level. It was mainly the diverging views of the UK and Germany on co-determination which have thwarted projects like the Draft Fifth Company Law Directive or the establishment of a European Private Company (Societas Privata Europaea, SPE). It is downright ironic that while the UK now shows an interest in co-determination, the concept is being questioned in Germany after decades of lying dormant. The reason for the new German discussion of co-determination are doubts regarding the compatibility of its specific form of co-determination with higher-ranking Union law. This post provides a brief overview of the most recent developments in German co-determination law that were the focus of a joint Oxford/Munich conference at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich in March 2016.
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Ivan Tchotourian
Gouvernance Normes d'encadrement Structures juridiques
Gouvernance des banques : une analyse de l’ECGI
Ivan Tchotourian 9 juillet 2016
Excellent Law Working Paper de l’ECGI (No. 316/2016) de John Armour, Dan Awrey, Paul L. Davies, Luca Enriques, Jeffrey N. Gordon, Colin Mayer et Jennifer Payne consacré à la gouvernance d’entreprise des banques : « Bank Governance ».
Voici le résumé :
According to a common narrative, in addition to inadequate capital and liquidity, the failure of banks in the financial crisis also reflected their poor governance. By governance we mean broadly the oversight that comes from banks’ own shareholders and other stakeholders of the way in which they are run.
The problem of bank governance stems from the way in which banks are financed and regulated, from the externalities bank failures produce, and from the nature of their assets. In the period leading up to the financial crisis, it was believed that regulation would cause banks to internalize the costs of their activities, meaning that what maximized bank shareholders’ returns would also be in the interests of society.
Consequently large banks used the same governance tools as non-financial companies to minimize shareholder-management agency costs, namely independent boards, shareholder rights, the shareholder primacy norm, the threat of takeovers, and equity-based executive compensation. Unfortunately, such tools had the adverse effect of encouraging bank managers to take excessive risks: as we describe in this chapter, banks that had the most ‘pro-shareholder’ boards and the closest alignment between executive returns and the stock price were those which took the most risks prior to, and suffered the greatest losses during, the crisis.
Consequently, a significant rethink about the way in which banks are governed is required. The structure and function of bank boards, the compensation of bank executives and the function of risk management within organizations needs careful crafting if governance reforms are to address not exacerbate bank failures.
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Ivan Tchotourian
autres publications Gouvernance Normes d'encadrement normes de droit normes de marché
Governance goes green : à lire !
Ivan Tchotourian 6 juillet 2016
Beau rapport du cabinet Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP qui montre que la RSE ne peut plus être ignoré par les entreprises : « Governance Goes Green ».
It’s not just us tree-huggers. Increasingly, institutional investors, pension plans and regulators are calling for (and in some cases requiring) companies to assess and report on the sustainability of their business operations and investments. Climate change and other environmental concerns are at the forefront of these calls. Institutional investors are focusing on sustainable business practices – a broad category in which environmental and social risks, costs and opportunities of doing business are analyzed alongside conventional economic considerations – as a key factor in long-term financial performance. Sustainability proponents are looking to boards of directors and management to integrate these considerations into their companies’ long-term business strategies.
Éléments essentiels à retenir :
- Institutional investors increasingly regard environmental and other sustainability issues as strategic matters for companies.
- Shareholders continue to submit environmental and other sustainability proposals, successfully garnering attention and prompting companies to make changes, despite their failure to win majority votes.
- Independent organizations are developing standards for sustainability and environmental reporting to provide investors with consistent metrics for assessing and comparing the sustainability of companies’ practices.
- Sustainability and environmental reporting remains in the SEC’s sights as it evaluates the effectiveness of current disclosure requirements and considers changes for the future.
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Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial Normes d'encadrement rémunération
Alstom ou la résistance des actionnaires
Ivan Tchotourian 5 juillet 2016
Encore un exemple de résistance des actionnaires à la rémunération proposée au PDG : « Les actionnaires d’Alstom se prononcent contre la rémunération de Patrick Kron » (Les Échos.fr, 5 juillet 2016). 62% des actionnaires ont voté contre la septième résolution présentée à l’assemblée générale, définissant les éléments de rémunération de Kron, qui a quitté l’entreprise le 31 janvier dernier.
L’assemblée générale des actionnaires d’Alstom a émis un vote négatif sur la rémunération de Patrick Kron, ancien PDG du groupe industriel français. Au total, 62% des actionnaires ont voté contre la septième résolution présentée à l’assemblée générale, définissant les éléments de rémunération de Kron, qui a quitté l’entreprise le 31 janvier dernier, deux mois avant la fin de l’exercice décalé (2015-2016) de l’entreprise.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
