Gouvernance | Page 40

Pour Paul Hodgson, il est temps de changer la done dans le domaine de la gouvernance d’entreprise : « Change to U.K. CEO pay or regulation seen as inevitable » (Compliance Week, 20 juillet 2016).

Voici un extrait :

wC’s latest report, called Time to Listen, is subtitled, “We need to find a way to respond to public concern about executive pay, or matters will be taken out of our hands.”

The report draws its conclusions on the need to address income inequality from both its own research and the British Social Attitudes 32 survey, published in 2015, which showed strong agreement, even among those voting conservative, to some stark statements:

• There is one law for the rich and another for the poor
• Ordinary people do not get their fair share of the nation’s wealth
• Management will always try to get the better of employees if it gets the chance
• Big business benefits owners at the expense of workers

(…) The paper concludes that CEO pay in listed companies is probably the result of market forces operating in imperfectly. It says that the current system of shareholder votes is working but has not been given time to “bed down” and that further regulation may do more harm than good. Finally, it says: “We should in any case be more concerned about pay structures than pay levels.” But the report says that action is not simply required at the top but also at the bottom; addressing stagnating pay and employment uncertainty for ordinary workers. Especially in a period of uncertainty caused by Brexit, “companies will be judged by how they treat the most vulnerable in their workforce.”

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Les entreprises japonaises feraient-elles l’objet d’une gouvernance de type anglo-américaine ? C’est ce qu’il semble à la lecture de cet article : « Shareholders put Japan’s corporate governance to the test » (Nikkei Asian Review, 25 juin 2016).

Voici quelques extraits :

Many stockholders at security company Secom’s annual meeting Friday demanded explanations over why then-Chairman Shuji Maeda and then-President Hiroshi Ito were fired in May, despite the company’s strong performance last fiscal year. (…) Secom voluntarily created an executive nomination and compensation committee, but has not made the members’ names public. Attendees raised questions over the effectiveness of the company’s governance structure. « There’s still room for improvement in the selection process for executives, » one said.

Shareholders at Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings’ meeting the same day focused on earnings power and dividends. The chemical company had logged extraordinary losses from restructuring its petrochemical business, while return on equity fell under 5% for the year ended in March. Shareholders demanded more details over the loss, and urged the company to try to raise its stock price. (…)

Kobe Steel logged a group net loss last fiscal year, and its ROE has long remained low. Just 87.3% of shareholders voted for the proposal to retain Chairman and President Hiroya Kawasaki, down 8 percentage points from last year. (…)

Toshiba came under harsh criticism at its Wednesday meeting, with shareholders blaming the company’s top-down culture and the lack of independence at its accounting department for its bookkeeping scandal. Only 87.06% of shareholders voted to reappoint President Satoshi Tsunakawa,

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Le Fonds monétaire international vient de faire passer un message clair à la Chine : il faut améliorer la gouvernance d’entreprise. Une synthèse de ce message du FMI se retrouve au lien suivant : « IMF calls on China to improve corporate governance, as total debt equals 225% of GDP ».

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is calling on China to improve corporate governance because despite the country’s reforms over the years, the reforms have done more to liberalize economic activity, creating markets and freedom to compete, than to impose disciplines and hard budget constraints on borrowers.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Sur The Conversation, Thomas Breda propose un billet intéressant intitulé : « Pour la mise en œuvre en France d’une nouvelle « gouvernance du salariat » ». Les pistes évoquées par l’auteur sont pertinentes et amènent à repenser la relation (trop souvent étudiée à huit-clos) de la corporate governance avec la labour governance.

Les négociations d’entreprise sont au cœur d’un paradoxe : peu utilisées par les acteurs concernés – entreprises et représentants du personnel – et peu étudiées par les chercheurs en économie, elles seraient pourtant la clé pour déverrouiller un dialogue social déficient… et offrir de nouvelles perspectives à l’économie française. Mais les conditions ne sont aucunement en place : il faut commencer par faire émerger de nouvelles formes de « gouvernance du salariat ».

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian