M. Peregrine fait une lecture des conséquences de la guerre en Ukraine sous le prisme de la gouvernance d’entreprise en proposant de revisiter les notions de risques globaux et de gouvernance globale : « The Globalization Of Corporate Governance » (Forbes, 13 mars 2022).
Extrait
The global economic sanctions against Russia, and the potential impact of their application, will have significant governance implications for U.S. corporations. This will be the case regardless of whether they have been direct participants in the sanctions process or are just observers, indirectly affected by what is expected to be a significant spillover effect.
(…) The most immediate governance impact will likely be with respect to decisions on conducting business in Russia or with Russian-based companies, as well as participation in the delivery of humanitarian aid to Ukraine and its citizens. The more long-term impact may be on the need for more focused board oversight of the economic, social and political implications of a possible return to a global West/East Cold War environment.
(…)
Global considerations have long been a staple of sophisticated corporate enterprise risk programs, but have been monitored with varying degrees of commitment by the board’s audit and risk committees. They have typically addressed risks which are grounded principally in “whole world” environmental, social, health and cultural issues. Particular “ERM” global risk focus has been on such recognizable topics as climate change, climate inaction, infectious diseases, erosion of social cohesion and natural resource deterioration.
Additional risks, as identified by the World Economic Forum’s 2022 Global Risk Report, include labor market gaps, protectionism, educational disparities, greater barriers to international mobility, and crowding and competition in space, as well as supply chain and operating challenges impacted by foreign economic trends. All of these are, of course, legitimate enterprise risks. They are worthy of consideration by the boards of directors of U.S. companies, especially when viewed through the experience of a multi-year global pandemic. But they have not always been addressed with any degree of priority or urgency by the board.
(…) Specific elements of these new global risks to be considered by the board, or its ERM committee, might include the following:
This study for the European Commission focuses on due diligence requirements to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for abuses of human rights, including the rights of the child and fundamental freedoms, serious bodily injury or health risks, environmental damage, including with respect to climate. It was conducted by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (lead), Civic Consulting and LSE Consulting. Through desk research, country analyses, interviews and surveys it identifies Market Practices (Task 1) and perceptions regarding regulatory options. The Regulatory Review (Task 2), including twelve Country Reports, shows that UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’ standard of due diligence is increasingly being introduced into legal standards or proposed in Member States. The Problem Analysis, policy background and intervention logic concludes with the definition of four options for regulatory proposals (Task 3): No change (Option 1), new voluntary guidelines (Option 2), new reporting requirements (Option 3) and mandatory due diligence as a legal standard of care (Option 4). Option 4 includes sub-options limited to sector and company size, and enforcement through state-based oversight or judicial / non-judicial remedies. The assessment of impacts of regulatory options (Task 4) considers economic impacts, impacts on public authorities, social, human rights and environmental impacts.
Bonjour à toutes et à tous, le journal Les affaires est à consulter. Il y a un dossier spécial consacré à la gouvernance des entreprises canadiennes et québécoises : « Les grands de la gouvernance ».
Au sommaire, vous trouverez :
Qui sont les étoiles montantes de la gouvernance?
Qui sont les jeunes administrateurs promis à un brillant avenir
M. Bruno Alomar revient sur 25 ans de réforme en Europe en matière de gouvernance dans un article de Le Figaro : « Europe et entreprise : 25 ans de réforme de la gouvernance, pour quel bilan ? » (20 décembre 2017). Cet article est intéressant en jetant un éclairage critique sur les grandes orientations qui ont caractérisé la gouvernance d’entreprise…
Extrait :
Au niveau de l’entreprise, le mouvement continuel de réformes a vu fleurir comités d’études, administrateurs indépendants, codes éthiques, médiateurs internes etc. Surtout, la réforme de la corporate governancea conduit à repenser le fonctionnement des organes de décision, en imposant un modèle de dissociation du pouvoir, soit par la distinction directoire/ conseil de surveillance, soit par la dissociation des fonctions président et de directeur général.
Comme en matière européenne, malgré des progrès (transparence), la gouvernance n’a pas été significativement améliorée. La dissociation du pouvoir, cœur de la réforme, d’inspiration anglo-saxonne et germanique, a en réalité largement abouti à une dilution des responsabilités. Qu’il soit permis de rappeler ici que le droit français, au travers de la fonction de Président-Directeur-Général (PDG), présente lui des atouts que l’on a trop souvent ignorés. La concentration lisible des pouvoirs entre ses mains en est un, qui garantit que son titulaire n’agit pas seulement dans l’intérêt des actionnaires, mais bien dans celui de l’entreprise, qui est plus vaste. La claire reddition des comptes en est un autre, puisque le PDG voit son action encadrée par un large principe de responsabilité, et qu’il est, de surcroît révocable selon un régime strict (sans motif ni dommages-intérêts). Enfin, l’entreprise, ses salariés, comme les citoyens, doivent sans ambiguïtés, savoir qui prend les décisions, qui incarne la société, particulièrement quand l’entreprise concernée connaît une phase de mutation profonde: le PDG.
Japanese corporate culture is being blamed for the mistakes. Economists Naoshi Ikeda, Kotaro Inoue and Sho Watanabe of the Tokyo Institute of Technology recently set out to test the « quiet-life hypothesis, » which is, as Bloomberg describes, « the idea that without shareholder pressure, managers will tend to avoid big decisions and content themselves with managing stable corporate empires, letting their companies stagnate. »
The researchers found that there’s a lot of this « quiet-life » business activity going on in Japan. Cross-shareholding (Keiretsu), where corporations own each other’s stock is rife, and this means companies are reluctant to challenge each other. The researchers found that at companies with a considerable level of cross-ownership, R&D spending and growth CapEx is relatively low compared to the rest of the market.
But progress is being made. Three and a half years after the government introduced a stewardship code for local institutional investors and more than two years since the launch of a governance code for listed Japanese companies, listed companies are moving in the right direction. Dividend payouts have reached a record, and there has been a quadrupling of firms with two or more independent directors on their boards over the past four years. There has also been an increase in of “constructive,” or friendly, activists (referred to as engagement funds rather than activist funds), which aim to tackle corporate governance issues, but with an explicitly low-key, humble approach.
So what changes, in what could be the most significant reform of corporate governance since the 2005 Greenbury report, is the paper proposing to make – and how are business leaders responding?
Morceaux choisis :
“Unions are angry that the proposal to have workers on boards has been dropped, in favour of advisory panels for workers and consumers, and the allocation of special responsibilities to non-executives. Large private companies will be dismayed about proposals about new rules for them. They may argue that this has been based on the poor behaviour of a small minority.”
“The paper toes a very careful line – raising important questions – and then delivering fairly watered-down recommendations. For example, the paper suggests a binding annual shareholder vote on executive pay, but excludes some elements of executive pay packages from the vote.
“I welcome any effort that encourages business to do the right thing, but corporate governance is about so much more than regulating executive pay. The boardroom sets the standard for the whole of the business and must be accountable for that ».
« For reform to be taken forward, business leaders should be encouraged to focus on changes that drive long-term prospects ».
Martin Lipton vient de publier un bel article « Corporate Governance: The New Paradigm » le 11 janvier 2017 sur le Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation. Une magnifique synthèse qui met en lumière la nouvelle gouvernance d’entreprise qui s’en vient.
In essence, the New Paradigm recalibrates the relationship between public corporations and their major institutional investors and conceives of corporate governance as a collaboration among corporations, shareholders and other stakeholders working together to achieve long-term value and resist short-termism. In this framework, if a corporation, its board of directors and its CEO and management team are diligently pursuing well-conceived strategies that were developed with the participation of independent, competent and engaged directors, and its operations are in the hands of competent executives, investors will support the corporation and refuse to support short-term financial activists seeking to force short-term value enhancements without regard to long-term value implications. As part of their stewardship role, institutional investors will work to understand corporations’ strategies and operations and engage with them to provide corporations with opportunities to understand the investors’ opinions and to adjust strategies and operations in order to receive the investors’ support.
Qu’implique ces nouvelles orientations de la gouvernance d’entreprise ? Martin Lipton les met en lumière magnifiquement :
For corporations, the New Paradigm will:
alleviate pressures to maximize profits and equity share value in the short term at the expense of the long term;
encourage corporations to pursue thoughtful strategies for maximizing profits and equity share value in the long term;
encourage corporations to incorporate relevant sustainability, ESG (environmental, social and governance) and CSR (corporate social responsibility) considerations in developing their long-term strategies and operations planning;
encourage corporations to be transparent in their financial reporting; and
encourage a corporation to periodically review governance and thoughtfully consider the principles promulgated or endorsed by its major investors.
For investors, the New Paradigm will:
increase the willingness to withstand cyclical headwinds and short-term market fluctuations in the pursuit of long-term value;
minimize reliance on short-term financial performance metrics and promote a more holistic understanding of corporations’ businesses;
encourage investors to consistently support the pursuit of well-designed long-term strategies by the corporations in which they invest;
discourage investors from supporting short-term financial activists that advocate only short-term profit and value maximization;
discourage investors from outsourcing proxy voting decisions to proxy advisory firms or otherwise basing such decisions on “check-the-box” principles, scores or formulas;
not discourage investors from entertaining proposals by responsible activist shareholders for support in improving the strategy or operations of under-performing corporations; and
encourage investors to address relevant sustainability, ESG and CSR matters. At the interface between corporations and investors, the New Paradigm will:
encourage investors to communicate directly their preferences, expectations and policies to corporations;
encourage corporations to provide meaningful communications about strategy, long-term objectives and governance, and encourage investors to actively listen to corporations and review these communications;
encourage corporations to establish and maintain meaningful, direct long-term relationships with significant investors in corporations and encourage those investors to have the appropriate policies, personnel and procedures for meaningful reciprocity in the relationship; and
where corporations are pursuing subpar strategies that are unlikely to bring long-term success, encourage investors to use behind-the-scenes, direct engagement with those corporations as a first line of action.
