Valeur actionnariale vs. sociétale | Page 21

Intéressant ce que relaie le Time. Il y a un des candidats à l’élection présidentielle américaine a invoqué le devoir fiduciaire pour justifier les politiques d’évitement fiscales qu’il a mises en œuvre pendant de nombreuses années : « Donald Trump’s ‘Fiduciary Duty’ Excuse on Taxes Is Just Plain Wrong ». Qu’en penser ? Pour la journaliste Rana Foroohar, la réponse est claire : « The Donald and his surrogates say he has a legal responsibility to minimize tax payments for his shareholders. It’s not a good excuse ».

It’s hard to know what to say to the New York Times’ revelation that Donald Trump lost so much money running various casino and hotel businesses into the ground in the mid-1990s ($916 million to be exact) that he could have avoided paying taxes for a full 18 years as a result (which may account for why he hasn’t voluntarily released his returns—they would make him look like a failure).

But predictably, Trump did have a response – fiduciary duty made me do it. So, how does the excuse stack up? Does Donald Trump, or any taxpayer, have a “fiduciary duty,” or legal responsibility, to maximize his income or minimize his payments on his personal taxes? In a word, no. “His argument is legal nonsense,” says Cornell University corporate and business law professor Lynn Stout,

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Ivan Tchotourian

Bonjour à toutes et à tous, c’est avec cette question que Michael Dorff (« Can a Corporation Have a Soul? ») ouvre un beau débat dans The Atlantic ? Merci à Mme Louise Champoux-Paillé d’avoir diffusé l’information sur cet article sur LinkedIn…

In light of recent corporate scandals such as Wells Fargo’s, one can be excused for wondering whether corporations seek anything beyond profits for their shareholders by any means necessary. In these days of activist hedge funds pressing companies for ever more share buybacks, is there room for a company that cares about its workers, the environment, or the communities in which it does business? In other words, can a company have a soul?

Mark Fields, the CEO of Ford Motor Company, believes so. In an interview with Fortune, he called Ford “a company with a soul,” pointing to a long-held policy of donating money and employees’ volunteer hours to the communities in which the company operates and to the company’s high rankings for good corporate behavior by an organization called the Ethisphere Institute. Fields quoted the company’s founder, Henry Ford, as saying, “A business that earns nothing but money is a poor business.”

Et la conclusion :

In the absence of any radical new regulations, for American-style capitalism to work again for the middle class as well as for the wealthy, more CEOs like Fields are going to have to adopt ambitious plans for implementing Henry Ford’s advice, plans that stretch far beyond making some charitable donations and implementing sustainability initiatives. They are going to have to give their companies true souls.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Ivan Tchotourian

Marc T. Moore offre un beau papier sur la place de la valeur actionnariale en Grande-Bretagne dans une perspective historique : « Shareholder Primacy, Labour and the Historic Ambivalence of UK Company Law » (Oxford University, 20 septembre 2016).

Most directors and senior managers of British companies would likely regard it as trite law that, in undertaking their functions, they are accountable first and foremost to their employer firm’s general body of shareholders. It follows that the interests of other corporate constituencies – and, in particular, those of employees – must ultimately cede to those of shareholders in the event of conflict. Although frequently taken for granted today, the lexical priority that the British company law framework affords to the interests of shareholders is remarkable, not least when viewed alongside the correspondingly disempowered corporate governance status of labour in the UK.

On first reflection, it is somewhat curious that the interests of employees have not figured more prominently within British company law, especially when one considers the general political disposition of the country in modern times. Throughout the course of the last century, the UK has witnessed 37 years of Labour government (or 42 years if one includes Labour’s participation in the wartime coalition government). And although the UK is acknowledged on the whole as having a more neo-liberal (ie right-wing) political orientation than many of its northern European counterparts, it nonetheless has a comparatively strong social-democratic (ie left-wing) political tradition in relation to other English-speaking and former-Commonwealth countries, at least since the Second World War. It is thus not unreasonable to expect that, at some point during the post-war era, democratic public policy measures might have been taken to effect the direct integration of worker interests into the heart of the British corporate legal structure.

Une de ses conclusion est intéressante :

However, whilst the centrality of shareholders’ interests to the doctrinal and normative fabric of contemporary UK company law is both manifest and incontrovertible, this has curiously not always been the case. With respect to the fundamental question of the proper corporate objective (that is, as to whose interest British company directors are expected to serve while carrying out their functions), UK company law up until 2006 adopted a highly ambiguous position. Moreover, British company law has in the fairly recent past come precariously close to adopting a radically different board representation model, in which worker interests would formally have shared centre-stage with those of shareholders in a similar vein to the traditional German corporate governance model.

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Ivan Tchotourian

Bonjour à toutes et à tous, Mhir Naniwadekar et Umakanth Varottil publient un billet sur le blog de l’Université Oxford sous le titre : « Directors’ Duties and Stakeholder Interests: Comparing India and the United Kingdom » (28 août 2016). Vraiment intéressant et qui montre toute l’incertitude de la protection des parties prenantes malgré les nouveaux articles 172 au Royaume-Uni et 166 en Inde !

La version longue de ce papier est à consulter sur SSRN : Mihir Naniwadekar et Umakanth Varottil, « The Stakeholder Approach Towards Directors’ Duties Under Indian Company Law: A Comparative Analysis » (August 11, 2016). NUS – Centre for Law & Business Working Paper No. 16/03; NUS Law Working Paper No. 2016/006.

Quelle conclusion ?

Our principal thesis in this paper is that while section 166(2) of the 2013 Act in India, at a superficial level, extensively encompasses the interests of non-shareholder constituencies in the context of directors’ duties and textually adheres to the pluralist stakeholder approach, a detailed analysis based on an interpretation of the section and the possible difficulties that may arise in its implementation substantially restricts the rights of stakeholders in Indian companies. Moreover, while the stated preference of the Indian Parliament veers towards the pluralist approach that recognizes the interests of shareholders and non-shareholder constituencies with equal weight, the functioning of the Companies Act, as well as the principles of common law relating to directors’ duties, make the Indian situation not altogether different from the ESV model followed in the UK. As such, proponents of the stakeholder theory in India should not declare victory with the enactment of section 166(2). Arguably, the magnanimity of its verbiage and rhetoric in favour of stakeholders merely pays lip service to them and obscures any real teeth or legal ammunition available to non-shareholder constituencies to assert those rights as a matter of law.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Le séminaire DRT-7022 donné à l’automne 2016 apportera aux étudiants une réflexion originale sur les liens entre la sphère économico-juridique, la gouvernance des entreprises et les enjeux sociétaux actuels. Le séminaire s’interrogera sur le contenu des normes de gouvernance et leur pertinence dans un contexte de profonds questionnements des modèles économique et financier.

En partenariat avec les éditions Yvon Blais, un prix (en dotation de livres) sera remis aux meilleurs travaux de recherche.

Pour faciliter la diffusion des travaux réalisés par les étudiants, le séminaire DRT-7022 fera appel à deux moyens. D’une part, le séminaire comprendra un colloque-étudiant. Les étudiants participeront comme conférenciers à un colloque organisé par le CÉDÉ. Cette tribune publique leur permettra de présenter le résultat de leurs recherches effectuées durant la session d’hiver. D’autre part, le séminaire bénéficiera du soutien de trois blogues : le blogue Droit de l’entreprise : gouvernance comparée et responsabilité sociétale (ici), le blogue de Jacques Grisé – Gouvernance (ici) et le blogue Gouvernance & services financiers du Centre d’Études en Droit Économique (CÉDÉ) (ici). Ces blogues seront des partenaires privilégiés en proposant aux étudiants de diffuser certains de leurs travaux afin de leur donner une audience provinciale et nationale, et ce, au travers d’un format original.

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Ivan Tchotourian