Valeur actionnariale vs. sociétale | Page 23

Un article de The Wall Street Journal « The End of Economic Forecasting » revient (pour la critiquer sévèrement) sur la domination de la logique financière sur les grandes entreprises actuelles.

Because financial markets and financial investors are increasingly driving the world economy and it is inherently volatile. Total global assets under professional management have now increased to an astonishing $75 trillion, according to Boston Consulting Group. These gigantic amounts are rocketing around the globe looking for returns. The result is that commodity markets, corporations, governments and other sectors are being relentlessly financialized—or tied to the fortunes of investments in markets—and thus less predictable.

(…) Financial factors also are increasingly dominating corporations—and the result is very short-term behavior. The rise of shareholder activism, hostile takeovers and newer techniques of executive compensation have put managements and boards of directors under tremendous pressure to deliver returns to shareholders now. The result is increasing focus on immediate earnings and share-price movements.

Nearly 80% of respondents to a 2014 CFO survey in the Harvard Business Review said they would sacrifice “economic value” to meet Wall Street targets. This is why so much capital has been used for share-buyback programs, rather than for long-term investment. With corporations themselves losing focus on the long term, it is harder for anyone to forecast their performance.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Pour celles et ceux que le mouvement progressistes intéressent, plusieurs juristes de renom s’y intéressent :

• Claude Champaud, dir, L’entreprise dans la société du 21^e siècle, Bruxelles, Larcier, 2013; Claude Champaud, Manifeste pour la doctrine de l’entreprise : Sortir de la crise du financialisme, Bruxelles, Larcier, 2011.
• Isabelle Corbisier, « L’entreprise : Quelles sont ses valeurs fondatrices et ses finalités ? » dans Nicolas Thirion, dir, Crise et droit économique, Bruxelles, Larcier, 2014, 175 et aussi Isabelle Corbisier, La société : contrat ou institution ? Droits étatsuniens, français, belge, néerlandais, allemand et luxembourgeois, Bruxelles, Larcier, 2011.
• Simon Deakin, « The Juridical Nature of the Firm » dans Thomas Clarke et Douglas Branson, dir, The SAGE Handbook of Corporate Governance, Londres, SAGE, 2012, 113.
• Kent Greenfield, « Saving the World With Corporate Law » (2008) 57 Emory LJ 947; Kent Greenfield, « New Principles for Corporate Law » (2005) 1 Hastings Bus LJ 87.
• Andrew R Keay, The Corporate Objective: Corporations, Globalisation and the Law, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2013.
• Catherine Malecki, Responsabilité sociale des entreprises : Perspectives de la gouvernance d’entreprise durable, Paris, LGDJ, 2014.
• David K Millon, « Why Is Corporate Management Obsessed with Quarterly Earnings and What Should be Done About It? » (2002) 70 Geo Wash L Rev. 890; David K Millon, « New Directions in Corporate Law: Communitarians, Contractarians, and Theorisis in Corporate Law » (1993) 50 Wash. & Lee L Rev 1373 ; David K Millon, « Redefining Corporate Law » (1991) 24 Ind L Rev 233; David K Millon, « Theories of the Corporation » (1990) 39 Duke LJ 201.
• Lawrence E Mitchell, Corporate Irresponsibility: America’s Newest Export, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2001 ; Lawrence E Mitchell, dir, Progressive Corporate Law, Boulder, Westview Press, 1995.
• Beate Sjåfjell et Benjamin Richardson, Company Law and Sustainability: Legal Barriers and Opportunities, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2015 et Beate Sjåfjell, Towards A Sustainable EU Company Law: A Normative Analysis of the Objectives of EU Law, with the Takeover Directive as a Test Case, European Company Law Series, Kluwer Law International, 2009.
• Lynn A Stout, The Shareholder Value Myth, San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler, 2012 ; Lynn A Stout, « Why We Should Stop Teaching Dodge v. Ford » (2008) 3:1 Va L & Bus Rev 163 ; Lynn A Stout, « Takeovers in the Ivory Tower: How Academics Are Learning Martin Lipton May be Right » (2005) 60 Bus Lawyer 1435 ; Lynn A Stout, « Share price as a Poor Criterion for Good Corporate Law » (2005) UCLA School of Law Document de travail No 05-7, en ligne: <http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=660622> ; Lynn A Stout, « Bad and Not-So-Bad Arguments for Shareholder Primacy » (2002) 75:5 S Cal L Rev 1189.
• Alain Supiot, La gouvernance par les nombres, Paris, Éditions Fayard, 2015 ; Alain Supiot, dir, L’entreprise dans un monde sans frontières – Perspectives économiques et juridiques, Collection les sens du droit, Paris, Éditions Dalloz, 2015.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Bonjour à toutes et à tous, voici un très bel article de Susan Holmberg et Mark Schmitt accessible en ligne : « The Milton Friedman Doctrine Is Wrong. Here’s How to Rethink the Corporation » (Evonomics, 9 juin 2016).

The compensation of American executives—CEOs and their “C-suite” colleagues—has long been a matter of controversy, especially recently, as the wages of average workers have stagnated and economic inequality has moved to the center of the national debate. Just about every spring, the season of corporate proxy votes, we see the rankings of the highest-paid CEOs, topped by men (they’re all men until number 21) like David Cote of Honeywell, who in 2013 took home $16 million in salary and bonus, and another $9 million in stock options.

(…)

The problem isn’t that the political system doesn’t want to deal with excessive CEO pay. There have been any number of formal efforts to rein in executive pay, involving a host of direct regulation and tax changes. But most of the specific efforts to reduce executive pay—through major policies such as a limit on the tax deductibility of high salaries, as well as more modest accounting and disclosure legislation—have fallen short. That’s because the story of skyrocketing executive pay is a story about our conception of the corporation and its responsibilities. And until we rethink our deepest assumptions about the corporation, we won’t be able to master the challenge of excessive CEO pay, or the inequality it generates. Is the CEO simply the agent of the company’s shareholders? Is the corporation’s only obligation to return short-term gains to shareholders? Or can we begin to think of the corporation in terms of the interests of all those who have a stake in its success—its customers, its community, and all of its employees? If we take the latter view, the challenge of CEO pay will become clearer and more manageable.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

« The American corporation has been transformed by globalization and new technology. But equally powerful is the belief on Wall Street and in boardrooms that the sole responsibility of a corporation is to maximize profits for its shareholders ». Ce résumé du rapport de Marketplace « The price of profits » illustre parfaitement les 5 beaux chapitres (pas trop longs et accessibles à tout public) qu’il nous est donné de lire. Revoilà la primauté de la valeur actionnariale sur le devant de la scène pour être critiquée…

Listen to business news on cable TV, and you’ll hear bankers, fund managers and CEOs talk about a corporation’s legal responsibility to “maximize shareholder value.” The idea that the product of a corporation is profits is gospel. It’s taught in business school. But it’s not true.

(…) If jobs were the first target, how to spend a company’s profits was next. A corporation can invest in itself and grow or — what? Giant investment funds pressed for higher returns — higher share prices. An increasingly favorite strategy was to spend profits buying back the company’s own shares. It was financial engineering: fewer shares, higher share price.

The former corporate raider Carl Icahn, for example, started buying shares of Apple in 2013, and eventually owned more than 50 million, nearly 1 percent. He pressured Apple to buy back shares — and Apple is spending more than $100 billion doing so.

Icahn sold his shares this spring. Economist William Lazonick, the author of a shareholder-value analysis, “Profits Without Prosperity,” noted that Icahn was a share-renter, not a shareholder. He never invested a dollar in Apple itself.

Icahn said his investment in Apple shares netted him $2 billion. Apple? Its shares are below what the company paid for them. So far, Apple is a loser.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

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

Belle tribune de M. Gérard Bérubé dans Le Devoir du 11 juin : « Les ravages du court terme ». Ce dernier revient sur ce qu’il appelle – à juste titre – le diktat qui se se trouve pérenniser par une politique de rémunération des hauts dirigeants basée sur des indicateurs incitant à la performance à court terme. Comme l’auteur le note, « on pense à un bénéfice par action cible et à un objectif de rendement total pour l’actionnaire ».

Le cri du coeur est venu cette semaine d’un cabinet de services comptables. PwC a dit s’inquiéter de la vision à court terme des actionnaires. PwC faisait le bilan 2015 de l’industrie minière. Une année « caractérisée par une dégringolade générale ». Les 40 plus grandes sociétés minières ont enregistré collectivement une perte nette pour la première fois. Leur capitalisation boursière a fondu de 37 %, effaçant « tous les gains réalisés durant le supercycle des matières premières ». Le cabinet d’ajouter : « À l’échelle mondiale, on s’inquiète de la vision à court terme des actionnaires, qui se concentrent sur la variation des prix des matières premières et privilégient les rendements à court terme plutôt que l’horizon de placement à long terme indispensable dans le domaine minier. »

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian