engagement et activisme actionnarial Gouvernance Responsabilité sociale des entreprises
Mouvement anti-ESG : faut-il s’inquiéter ?
Ivan Tchotourian 15 mai 2024
Depuis quelques temps, des tentatives sont faites pour réduire la participation des investisseurs engagés. À ce titre, l’entreprise américaine Exxon a entrepris un recours judiciaire contre certaines parties prenantes, critiquant l’usage « activiste » des droits des actionnaires.
Extrait :
Exxon Mobil said Friday it will continue to pursue a lawsuit against two activist investors even after they withdrew a shareholder proposal on climate change, setting up a clash over what constitutes legitimate debate between a public company and its owners.
Exxon (XOM.N), opens new tab had taken the rare step in January of filing the lawsuit to block the shareholder measure from being voted on at its annual meeting.
(…) Exxon’s unusual legal action has been closely watched by investor activists worried the move could lead other companies to block shareholder resolutions in court, rather than through the usual process of appealing to regulators.
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engagement et activisme actionnarial Gouvernance Responsabilité sociale des entreprises
La durabilité portée par les investisseurs : le bon choix
Ivan Tchotourian 14 mai 2024
Le professeur Wolf-Georg Ringe a publié récemment une monographie que beaucoup de vous s’empresser de lire : « Investor-Led Sustainability in Corporate Governance » (Now Publishers, novembre 2022).
Résumé :
The transition to a sustainable economy currently involves a fundamental transformation of our capital markets. Lawmakers, in an attempt to overcome this challenge, frequently seek to prescribe and regulate how firms may address environmental, social, and governance (ESG) concerns by formulating conduct standards. Deviating from this conceptual starting point, the present study makes the case for another path towards achieving greater sustainability in capital markets, namely through the empowerment of investors.
This trust in the market itself is grounded in various recent developments both on the supply side and the demand side of financial markets, and also in the increasing tendency of institutional investors to engage in common ownership. The need to build coalitions among different types of asset managers or institutional investors, and to convince fellow investors of a given initiative, can then act as an in-built filter helping to overcome the pursuit of idiosyncratic motives and supporting only those campaigns that are seconded by a majority of investors. In particular, institutionalized investor platforms have emerged over recent years as a force for investor empowerment, serving to coordinate investor campaigns and to share the costs of engagement.
ESG engagement has the potential to become a very powerful driver towards a more sustainability-oriented future. Indeed, I show that investor-led sustainability has many advantages compared to a more prescriptive, regulatory approach where legislatures are in the driver’s seat. For example, a focus on investor-led priorities would follow a more flexible and dynamic pattern rather than complying with inflexible pre-defined criteria. Moreover, investor-promoted assessments are not likely to impair welfare creation in the same way as ill-defined legal standards; they will also not trigger regulatory arbitrage and would avoid deadlock situations in corporate decision-making. Any regulatory activity should then be limited to a facilitative and supportive role.
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