engagement et activisme actionnarial Gouvernance mission et composition du conseil d'administration Normes d'encadrement Nouvelles diverses rémunération
Rémunération des dirigeants : le CA doit prendre ses responsabilités
Ivan Tchotourian 17 avril 2016
Belle réflexion offerte par le Financial Times sur le rôle que le conseil d’administration devrait assumer en matière de rémunération des dirigeants : « Boards are responsible for limiting excess pay » (Financial Times, 17 avril 2016).
Boards of directors are not appointed to rubber-stamp formulas devised by consultants, no matter what the result. If there appears to be something awry, they should be able to exercise their judgment and not be limited by employment contracts that deny them authority. BP’s remuneration committee failed this simple test and so found itself exposed to scorn.
Nothing absolves a board of its responsibility to limit the quantum of pay. Chief executives perform tough, demanding, responsible jobs and their decisions heavily affect the value of companies. But it is not obvious why some need to be paid double-digit millions to do their best when single-digit millions or less were accepted as sufficient financial rewards not so long ago.
Boards sometimes need to compete for talent, signing contracts that raise expectations and constrain their freedom to cap pay. As the tenure of CEOs has reduced, bosses want to get rich faster. Some argue that they could earn more in private equity, away from the unforgiving public spotlight.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial Normes d'encadrement normes de droit
Actionnaires : faut-il renforcer leur pouvoir ?
Ivan Tchotourian 15 avril 2016
Le choix de renforcer le pouvoir des actionnaires est-il « le » bon choix ? Au travers de l’exemple de la banque d’investissement Morgan, Jill Fisch aborde cette thématique dans une de ces dernières études intitulé : « The Mess at Morgan: Risk, Incentives and Shareholder Empowerment » (ECGI Law Working Paper No. 311/2016, mars 2016).
The financial crisis of 2008 focused increasing attention on corporate America and, in particular, the risk-taking behavior of large financial institutions. A growing appreciation of the “public” nature of the corporation resulted in a substantial number of high profile enforcement actions. In addition, demands for greater accountability led policymakers to attempt to harness the corporation’s internal decision-making structure, in the name of improved corporate governance, to further the interest of non-shareholder stakeholders. Dodd-Frank’s advisory vote on executive compensation is an example.
This essay argues that the effort to employ shareholders as agents of public values and, thereby, to inculcate corporate decisions with an increased public responsibility is misguided. The incorporation of publicness into corporate governance mistakenly assumes that shareholders’ interests are aligned with those of non-shareholder stakeholders. Because this alignment is imperfect, corporate governance is a poor tool for addressing the role of the corporation as a public actor.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial Normes d'encadrement rémunération
La révolte de BP !
Ivan Tchotourian 15 avril 2016
Bonjour à toutes et à tous, en voilà une nouvelle : « BP investors revolt over chief Bob Dudley’s 20% pay rise » (Financial times, 14 avril 2016). La révolte des actionnaires est en marche dans le domaine de la rémunération des dirigeants des grandes entreprises américaines. BP vient d’en fournir une illustration…
Angry shareholders mounted an unprecedented protest against BP on Thursday, rebelling against a 20 per cent pay rise for chief executive Bob Dudley despite the oil group making its worst ever loss.
Investors voted against the company’s pay decisions for the first time in living memory, with 59 per cent of proxy votes cast going against BP’s decision to pay Mr Dudley nearly $20m for 2015, a year in which the company ran up a $5.2bn loss.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
Gouvernance Normes d'encadrement Nouvelles diverses responsabilisation à l'échelle internationale
Des milliards menacés par le réchauffement climatique
Ivan Tchotourian 15 avril 2016
« 2500 milliards de dollars d’actifs financiers menacés » ! Rien de moins selon un article de Le Devoir. Voilà qui amène à réfléchir sur les évolutions futures de l’encadrement de l’activité des entreprises et de la gouvernance.
Quelque 2500 milliards de dollars d’actifs financiers sur les marchés mondiaux seraient menacés si le réchauffement climatique se poursuivait et faisait gagner au monde 2,5 °C d’ici 2100, estime une étude britannique parue lundi dans Nature Climate Change.
Des économistes mettent de plus en plus en garde contre les conséquences du réchauffement sur l’activité économique et la croissance : dégâts liés à la recrudescence des intempéries, chute de la productivité, conséquence de la sécheresse sur l’agriculture, etc.
Mais pour la première fois, une étude s’attaque à l’estimation de cet impact sur la valeur des actifs mondiaux.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
Normes d'encadrement rémunération
More Companies Placing Limits on Director Pay
Ivan Tchotourian 9 avril 2016
Le 29 mars 2016, un article du Dow Jones Institutional News nous apprenait que les sociétés américaines sont de plus en plus nombreuses à limiter la rémunération de leurs dirigeants : « More Companies Placing Limits on Director Pay« . Attention toutefois : il n’est pas question de réduire la rémunération, mais plutôt d’encadrer des formes de rémunération pour éviter de futures poursuites judiciaires !
A growing number of Fortune 500 companies are putting limits on the stock awards they give directors, according to Willis Towers Watson PLC, a risk advisor and consulting firm. But the companies aren’t trying to keep directors’ pay low, so much as protecting directors from lawsuits. More than a quarter, or 28%, of the Fortune 500 companies today include in their compensation policies limits on how much directors can get in stock awards, according to Willis Towers Watson‘s analysis. Companies either set limits on the number of stock or on the amount in dollars directors can get paid. Typically these are set lower than the limits placed on executive pay, and need to be approved by shareholders. Most of the limits were put into place since 2013, suggesting that companies are only recently tackling the issue.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
Gouvernance Normes d'encadrement
Menace sur les big four
Ivan Tchotourian 8 avril 2016
L’audit occupe un rôle central dans la gouvernance des entreprises. Sur la base d’une entrevue avec Jim Peterson, voilà qu’un risque d’écroulement serait présent : « Quand les « Big Four » s’écrouleront ». Scénario catastrophe ou réaliste ?
Derrière ses allures policées, son message est pourtant explosif. Lui qui a longtemps été un homme du système, qui a connu de l’intérieur tous les rouages de la comptabilité des grandes multinationales, tire la sonnette d’alarme : les « Big Four », ces quatre grands cabinets d’audit internationaux (PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, Ernst & Young) risquent de s’effondrer à tout moment. « Ils sont plus fragiles qu’Arthur Andersen en 2002 », nous expliquait-il lors d’un récent passage à Londres, faisant référence à la faillite retentissante de l’ancien cabinet d’audit.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial mission et composition du conseil d'administration Normes d'encadrement normes de droit
Vote majoritaire : un moyen de rendre le CA plus responsable ?
Ivan Tchotourian 5 avril 2016
Un peu de lecture pour ce matin ? Je vous renvoie à cet intéressant article : Stephen Choi, New York University Jill Fisch, University of Pennsylvania and ECGI Marcel Kahan, New York University and ECGI Edward Rock, University of Pennsylvania, « Does Majority Voting Improve Board Accountability? », Law Working Paper No. 310/2016, March 2016.
Directors have traditionally been elected by a plurality of the votes cast. This means that in uncontested elections, a candidate who receives even a single vote is elected. Proponents of “shareholder democracy” have advocated a shift to a majority voting rule in which a candidate must receive a majority of the votes cast to be elected. Over the past decade, they have been successful, and the shift to majority voting has been one of the most popular and successful governance reforms. Yet critics are skeptical as to whether majority voting improves board accountability. Tellingly, directors of companies with majority voting rarely fail to receive majority approval – even more rarely than directors of companies with plurality voting. Even when such directors fail to receive majority approval, they are unlikely to be forced to leave the board. This poses a puzzle: why do firms switch to majority voting and what effect does the switch have, if any, on director behavior?
We empirically examine the adoption and impact of a majority voting rule using a sample of uncontested director elections from 2007 to 2013. We test and find partial support for four hypotheses that could explain why directors of majority voting firms so rarely fail to receive majority support: selection; deterrence/accountability; electioneering by firms; and restraint by shareholders.
Our results further suggest that the reasons for and effects of adopting majority voting may differ between early and later adopters. We find that early adopters of majority voting were more shareholder-responsive than other firms even before they adopted majority voting. These firms seem to have adopted majority voting voluntarily, and the adoption of majority voting has made little difference in their responsiveness to shareholders responsiveness going forward. By contrast, for late adopters, we find no evidence that they were more shareholder-responsive than other firms before they adopted majority voting, but strong evidence that they became more responsive after adopting majority voting.
Differences between early and late adopters can have important implications for understanding the spread of corporate governance reforms and evaluating their effects on firms. Reform advocates, rather than targeting the firms that, by their measures, are most in need of reform, instead seem to have targeted the firms that are already most responsive. They may then have used the widespread adoption of majority voting to create pressure on the nonadopting firms.
Empirical studies of the effects of governance changes thus need to be sensitive to the possibility that early adopters and late adopters of reforms differ from each other and that the reforms may have different effects on these two groups of firms.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
