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RSE, entreprises et droit canadien : un bilan

Bonjour à toutes et à tous, je viens de publier (avec Valérie Deshaye et Romy Mac Farlane-Drouin) dans Les Cahiers de droit (Volume 57, numéro 4) avec le titre suivant : « Entreprises et responsabilité sociale : évolution ou révolution du droit canadien des affaires ? ».

La responsabilité sociale des entreprises (RSE) gagne du terrain au Canada, comme le démontre le sujet des entreprises multinationales, notamment celles qui travaillent dans le domaine extractif. Le Canada a adopté en novembre 2014 une nouvelle stratégie de promotion de la responsabilité sociale des entreprises pour les sociétés extractives canadiennes présentes à l’étranger. Si le cadre législatif se montre à l’heure actuelle peu contraignant, il n’en demeure pas moins qu’il a connu quelques réformes récentes cherchant, au bout du compte, à donner à la RSE une place plus importante dans la sphère économique. Dans le même sens, la jurisprudence canadienne semble également faire bouger ses pions sur l’échiquier en tentant d’imposer aux sociétés mères une responsabilité plus grande, tout en facilitant l’accès des victimes aux recours judiciaires. Au final, le droit canadien des affaires est dans un continuum réglementaire caractérisé par une série d’évolutions (d’une force normative variable) qui renforcent la responsabilité de ces dernières.

Quelle est notre conclusion ?

Les conséquences de cette évolution du cadre normatif sont considérables. D’une part, la RSE donne à l’entreprise une place et un rôle différents dans les sociétés contemporaines, loin des lectures économique et financière : la RSE « brings a new perspective of the firm and its role in society, as corporations participate more and more as legitimate actors in the political process ». Elle « proposes a reinterpretation of the firm as a social and political actor ». D’autre part, ce sont les bases même de la gouvernance des entreprises (et son modèle théorique d’essence économico-financier) qui se trouvent renouvelées en profondeur dans un objectif clairement reconnaissable : les rendre plus responsables de leurs activités.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

 

autres publications engagement et activisme actionnarial Normes d'encadrement normes de droit normes de marché rémunération

Say on pay obligatoire : l’IGOPP doute

Excellent texte auquel je viens d’accéder rédigé par Yvon Allaire et François Dauphin daté du 11 août 2016 et intitulé : “Making Say-on-Pay Vote Binding: a Good Idea?” (IGOPP).

Petit extrait :

The challenge of reading and understanding the particulars of executive compensation has become far more daunting. Indeed, for the 50 largest (by market cap) companies on the TSX in 2015 that were also listed back in 2000, the median number of pages to describe their compensation went from 6 in 2000 to 34 pages in 2015, ranging all the way up to 66 pages. Investors with holdings in dozens or hundreds of stocks face a formidable task. The simplest way out is either to vote per the stock’s performance or, more likely, rely on the recommendation of proxy advisory firms (which also base their “advice” on relative stock market performance. (…)

Boards of directors, compensation committees and their consultants have come to realize that it is wiser and safer to toe the line and put forth pay packages that will pass muster with proxy advisory firms. The result has been a remarkable standardization of compensation, a sort of “copy and paste” across publicly listed companies. Thus, most CEO pay packages are linked to the same metrics, whether they operate in manufacturing, retailing, banking, mining, energy, pharmaceuticals or services. For the companies on the S&P/TSX 60 index, the so-called long term compensation for their CEO in 2015 was based on total shareholder return (TSR) or the earnings per share growth (EPS) in 85% of cases. The proxy advisory firm ISS has been promoting these measures as the best way to connect compensation to performance. (…)

At a more fundamental level, the setting of pay policies should be the preserve of the board, as Canadian corporate law clearly states. When egregious pay packages are given to executives, a say-on-pay vote, compulsory or not, binding or not, will always be much less effective than a majority of votes against the election of members of the compensation committee. But that calls upon large investment funds to show fortitude and cohesiveness in the few instances of unwarranted compensation which occur every year.

 

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

autres publications Gouvernance Normes d'encadrement normes de droit normes de marché

Governance goes green : à lire !

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.

 

 

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

autres publications Gouvernance normes de droit normes de marché Structures juridiques Valeur actionnariale vs. sociétale

Pourquoi les entreprises deviendraient-elles des B Corp ?

En voilà une question allez-vous me répondre et pourtant… Un récent article du Harvard Business Review de Suntae Kim, Matthew Karlesky, Christopher Myers et Todd Schifeling intitulé « Why Companies Are Becoming B Corporations » aborde la question de face.

2 raisons essentielles sont identifiées :

  1. First, as large established firms have ramped up their corporate social responsibility efforts, small businesses that have long been committed to social and environmental causes want to prove that they are more genuine, authentic advocates of stakeholder benefits.
  2.  The qualitative evidence, gathered from firms’ B corporation application materials, revealed that certifying firms believed “the major crises of our time are a result of the way we conduct business,” and they became a B Corporation to “join the movement of creating a new economy with a new set of rules” and “redefine the way people perceive success in the business world.”

 

So why do certain firms (and not others) choose to identify as B Corporations? Individual leaders are partly why some organizations broaden their purpose beyond maximizing shareholder value. We might look to Sir Richard Branson, who in 2013 co-launched the “B Team,” publicly decrying corporations’ sole focus on short-term profits and calling for a reprioritization of people- and planet-focused performance. We might also consider leaders of firms like Ben & Jerry’s or Patagonia (both B Corporations) that have prioritized societal and environmental agendas.

Clearly, such leaders can be important catalysts of social change. However, the explosive growth of B Corporations seems also to be driven by broader trends and changes in the corporate landscape that cannot be explained by individuals’ actions alone.

Two of us (Suntae Kim and Todd Schifeling) conducted research to build a more robust understanding of the rise of B corporations. By qualitatively examining the internal motives of firms in the process of becoming a B corporation, and quantitatively testing key factors in these firms’ external industry environment – including the shareholder- and stakeholder-focused behaviors of their corporate competitors – we found that there are at least two major underlying reasons why firms choose to seek B Corporation certification.

 

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

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L’ISR continue de croître en France

Sur LinkedIn, Dominique Blanc de Novethic m’apprend que « L’ISR de conviction doit gagner du terrain ». Il profite de cette tribune pour revenir sur la dernière étude de Novethic en matière d’ISR.

 

Les chiffres de l’investissement responsable français publiés aujourd’hui par le centre de recherche de Novethic témoignent d’une nouvelle progression, près de 30 %. Il représente aujourd’hui quasiment 750 milliards d’euros gérés par une cinquantaine de sociétés de gestion françaises dont les plus grosses et détenus par une douzaine d’investisseurs institutionnels.

L’investissement responsable pèse à présent suffisamment lourd pour se demander jusqu’où il fait la différence en fléchant les investissements vers les entreprises les mieux disantes en termes environnementaux et sociaux, au-delà de leurs performances économiques. Pour répondre à cette question, le centre de recherche de Novethic a, pour la première fois, présenté ces chiffres en basant son analyse sur la mesure de l’impact des démarches d’investissement responsable sur les choix de gestion et la composition des portefeuilles. Son enquête montre que pour trois quarts des encours, l’impact reste limité. Il ne faut pas minimiser l’importance de ces pratiques d’investissement responsable. Elles permettent de donner de la valeur à l’analyse des entreprises qui ne repose pas exclusivement sur des données financières mais tente d’évaluer les dimensions ESG (Environnementale, Sociale et de Gouvernance) de leurs métiers.

L’enquête de Novethic quantifie pour la première fois l’ISR de conviction, celui qui assume jusqu’au bout des choix fondés sur une  analyse ESG discriminante.

 

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

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En savoir plus sur l’ISR ?

Bonjour à toutes et à tous, si la problématique si actuelle de l’investissement socialement responsable (ISR) vous intéresse, nul doute que ce bel ouvrage suscitera votre curiosité : « The Routledge Handbook of Responsible Investment » (T. Hebb, J. P. Hawley, A. G.F. HOEPNER, A. L. Neher et D. Wood) chez Routledge.

 

The UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investment initiative has led to around a third of the world’s financial assets being managed with a commitment to invest in a way that considers environmental, social or governance (ESG) criteria. The responsible investment trend has increased dramatically since the global financial crisis, yet understanding of this field remains at an early stage.

This handbook provides an atlas of current practice in the field of responsible investment. With a large global team of expert contributors, the book explores the impact of responsible investment on key financial actors ranging from mainstream asset managers to religious organizations.

Offering students and researchers a comprehensive introduction to current scholarship and international structures in the expanding discipline of responsible investment, this handbook is vital reading across the fields of finance, economics and accounting.

 

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

autres publications Gouvernance normes de marché rémunération

« How incentives for long-term management backfire » : cela fait réfléchir !

Le Harvard Business Review propose un article intitulé : « How incentives for long-term management backfire” qui prend le contrepied de la croyance voulant que les plans incitatifs basés sur la performance à long terme seraient une cause du court-termisme de la direction des entreprises.

 

In the five years since the advent of Dodd-Frank regulation, corporate governance groups, with their policies requiring at least half of long-term incentives to be “performance-based,” have pushed companies to replace options with multi-year, performance plans. How could anyone object to such an effort? Hardly anyone, except here is the rub: Performance plans require performance targets, and in most companies, planning works in three-year cycles. The logical performance period for long-term incentives is one that matches those cycles. Three years has thus become the standard performance window for measuring achievement.

So a three-year horizon — not even a presidential term — has inexorably become the norm for investing hundreds of billions of dollars of money aimed at creating “long term” value. With the best of intentions, many proxy advisors and long-term investors have widely blessed three years as appropriate, adopting three-year pay for performance as their standard comparison. Today, four out of five S&P 500 companies use a three-year performance period in their long-term incentives. But executives today, who are paid on this new “long term,” typically with equity based partly on earnings-per-share performance, naturally think twice about retaining earnings for projects beyond three years. Their measurements conflict with their managerial inclinations, encouraging them to use earnings booked today to immediately return cash to shareholders.

 

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian