parties prenantes

Bel article de Martin Lipton tiré du Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance intitulé : « Stakeholder Governance and the Eclipse of Shareholder Primacy » (7 mai 2024). Cet article (court) fait de précieux rappel et évoque également les actualités récentes sur la question. Il y a qui plus est de belles sources !

Extrait :

Today, there is a growing recognition of the harm that shareholder primacy has wrought. In a widely heralded edition of his annual letter to shareholders, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, recently decried the “treadmill to ruin” for companies that succumb to the undue pressure of quarterly earnings by resorting to shortcuts, calling instead for building shareholder value over the long run by considering all of the company’s stakeholders, from customers to employees to communities. Echoing that concern, The Financial Times’ Rana Foroohar regularly implores policymakers and business leaders to beware “the perils of short-term financial market pressures” confronting the United States, warning in particular about a looming transport-and-logistics “crisis moment” due to the dramatic contraction in the American shipbuilding industry over the past several decades. And in the academic world, a variety of scholars have been rethinking prevailing theories of corporate governance — from Harvard Business School’s Joseph Bower and Lynn Paine, in The Error at the Heart of Corporate Leadership; to Oxford University’s Colin Mayer, who decisively states in his book Capitalism and Crises that the purpose of the corporation is “to produce profitable solutions for the problems of people and planet, not profiting from producing problems for either.” Indeed, recent debates about the corporation’s fundamental purpose have borne fruit in powerful statements of the urgency of stakeholder governance for our Nation’s economy, and for society more broadly.

(…)

With this history in mind, we continue to believe that It’s Time to Adopt The New Paradigm — CEOs and boards of corporations should forge partnerships with shareholders and other stakeholders in order to resist short-termism and embrace stakeholder governance in pursuit of sustainable, long-term value creation. And, it bears cautioning, corporations must not be diverted from this commitment by the growing politicization and polarization around specific environmental, social, and governance issues.

The panoply of complex stakeholder issues that companies face today remain integral to corporate sustainability, responsible risk management, and value creation. But the agendas of activists targeting stakeholder issues — in some cases, opposing consideration of such issues altogether, and in other cases, seeking to mandate the board’s prioritization of a specific stakeholder issue — threaten to distort stakeholder governance and undermine our progress away from the era of shareholder primacy. As we recently reiterated, “There should be no doubt that the law in Delaware and every other U.S. jurisdiction empowers well-advised boards . . . to vindicate long-term value as the true purpose of the corporation.” It remains incumbent upon and entirely within the purview of boards of directors to exercise their reasoned business judgment in carefully balancing the interests of all stakeholders in order to create long-term, sustainable value.

The emerging consensus about the essential role of stakeholder governance in America’s long-term corporate, economic, national security, and societal prosperity, heralds a development long overdue: the eclipse of shareholder primacy.

À la prochaine…

À l’été 2020, Yvan Allaire et François Dauphin ont publié une belle tribune dans Le Devoir intitulé : « Actionnaires et parties prenantes : quelle gouvernance à venir ? ». Ils démontrent tout leur scepticisme en mettant en lumière les zones d’ombre du modèle des parties prenantes.

En raison surtout d’une véritable révolution des modes et quanta de rémunération des hauts dirigeants, les sociétés cotées en bourse en sont venues graduellement depuis les années ’80s à œuvrer presqu’exclusivement pour maximiser la création de valeur pour leurs actionnaires.

Tout au cours de ces 40 ans, ce modèle de société fut critiqué, décrié, tenu responsable pour les inégalités de revenus et de richesse et pour les dommages environnementaux. Toutefois, tant que cette critique provenait d’organisations de gauche, de groupuscules sans appui populaire, les sociétés pouvaient faire fi de ces critiques, les contrant par des campagnes de relations publiques et des ajustements mineurs à leur comportement.

Soudainement, pour des raisons multiples, un peu mystérieuses, cette critique des entreprises et du « capitalisme » a surgi du cœur même du système, soit, de grands actionnaires institutionnels récemment convertis à l’écologie. Selon cette nouvelle perspective, les sociétés cotées en bourse devraient désormais non seulement être responsables de leurs performances financières, mais tout autant de l’atteinte d’objectifs précis en matière d’environnement (E), d’enjeux sociaux (S) et de gouvernance (G). Pour les grandes entreprises tout particulièrement, le triplé ESG, de facto le modèle des parties prenantes, est devenu une caractéristique essentielle de leur gouvernance.

Puis, signe des temps, quelque 181 PDG des grandes sociétés américaines ont pris l’engagement, il y a un an à peine, de donner à leurs entreprises une nouvelle «raison d’être » (Purpose en anglais) comportant un « engagement fondamental » envers clients, employés, fournisseurs, communautés et leur environnement et, ultimement, les actionnaires.

De toute évidence, le vent tourne. Les questions environnementales et sociales ainsi que les attentes des parties prenantes autres que les actionnaires sont devenues des enjeux incontournables inscrits aux agendas politiques de presque tous les pays.

Les fonds d’investissement de toute nature bifurquèrent vers l’exigence de plans d’action spécifiques, de cibles mesurables en matière d’ESG ainsi qu’un arrimage entre la rémunération des dirigeants et ces cibles.

Bien que louable à bien des égards, le modèle de « parties prenantes » soulève des difficultés pratiques non négligeables.

1. Depuis un bon moment la Cour suprême du Canada a interprété la loi canadienne de façon favorable à une conception « parties prenantes » de la société. Ainsi, un conseil d’administration doit agir exclusivement dans l’intérêt de la société dont ils sont les administrateurs et n’accorder de traitement préférentiel ni aux actionnaires ni à toute autre partie prenante. Toutefois la Cour suprême n’offre pas de guide sur des sujets épineux conséquents à leur conception de la société : lorsque les intérêts des différentes parties prenantes sont contradictoires, comment doit-on interpréter l’intérêt de la société? Comment le conseil d’administration devrait-il arbitrer entre les intérêts divergents des diverses parties prenantes? Quelles d’entre elles devraient être prises en compte?

2. Comment les entreprises peuvent-elles composer avec des demandes onéreuses en matière d’ESG lorsque des concurrents, domestiques ou internationaux, ne sont pas soumis à ces mêmes pressions?

3. À un niveau plus fondamental, plus idéologique, les objectifs ESG devraient-ils aller au-delà de ce que la réglementation gouvernementale exige? Dans une société démocratique, n’est-ce pas plutôt le rôle des gouvernements, élus pour protéger le bien commun et incarner la volonté générale des populations, de réglementer les entreprises afin d’atteindre les objectifs sociaux et environnementaux de la société? Mais se peut-il que cette conversion des fonds d’investissement aux normes ESG et la redécouverte d’une « raison d’être » et des parties prenantes par les grandes sociétés ne soient en fait que d’habiles manœuvres visant à composer avec les pressions populaires et atténuer le risque d’interventions « intempestives » des gouvernements?

4. Quoi qu’il en soit, le changement des modes de gestion des entreprises, présumant que cette volonté est authentique, exigera des modifications importantes en matière d’incitatifs financiers pour les gestionnaires. La rémunération des dirigeants dans sa forme actuelle est en grande partie liée à la performance financière de l’entreprise et fluctue fortement selon le cours de l’action. Relier de façon significative la rémunération des dirigeants à certains objectifs ESG suppose des changements complexes qui susciteront de fortes résistances. En 2019, 67,2% des firmes du S&P/TSX 60 ont intégré au moins une mesure ESG dans leur programme de rémunération incitative. Toutefois, seulement 39,7% ont intégré au moins une mesure liée à l’environnement. Quelque 90% des firmes qui utilisent des mesures ESG le font dans le cadre de leur programme annuel de rémunération incitative mais pas dans les programmes de rémunération incitative à long terme. Ce fait est également observé aux États-Unis, alors qu’une étude récente de Willis Towers Watson démontrait que seulement 4% des firmes du S&P 500 utilisaient des mesures ESG dans des programmes à long terme.

5. N’est-il pas pertinent de soulever la question suivante : si l’entreprise doit être gérée selon le modèle des « parties prenantes », pourquoi seuls les actionnaires élisent-ils les membres du conseil d’administration? Cette question lancinante risque de hanter certains des promoteurs de ce modèle, car il ouvre la porte à l’entrée éventuelle d’autres parties prenantes au conseil d’administration, telles que les employés. Ce n’est peut-être pas ce que les fonds institutionnels avaient en tête lors de leur plaidoyer en faveur d’une conversion ESG.

Un vif débat fait rage (du moins dans les cercles académiques) sur les avantages et les inconvénients du modèle des parties prenantes. Dans le milieu des entreprises toutefois, la pression incessante des grands investisseurs a converti la plupart des directions d’entreprises à cette nouvelle religion ESG et parties prenantes même si plusieurs questions difficiles restent en suspens.

À la prochaine…

Dans « Beware of the Panacea of Stakeholder-friendly Corporate Purposes », le professeur Marco Ventoruzzo propose une critique sévèrement de l’ouverture de la gouvernance d’entreprise aux parties prenantes (Oxford Business Law Blog, 13 avril 2020). À réfléchir…

Extrait :

In this short essay (…), I take issue with the relevance and effectiveness of ’corporate purpose’ as a form of private ordering (eg, as a bylaws provision), or in other sources of soft-law (self-regulation in corporate governance codes, declarations of business associations, etc). I challenge whether these are, in fact, effective tools to induce greater commitment toward stakeholders.

(…) My possible disagreement with Mayer and other similar approaches and initiatives—or, more precisely, with a possible reading of these approaches and initiatives—lays in the excessive trust and emphasis that has been reserved to formulas concerning the purpose of the corporation and their possible consequences. Mayer argues that the corporate contract should include a reference to stakeholders and general social interests beyond value for shareholders, suggesting that this simple trick would have a meaningful impact on business conduct.

(…) The reasons are obvious.

First, these formulas are so broad, vague and ephemeral that they cannot possibly represent a compass for corporate action; they cannot provide meaningful guidance for virtually any specific corporate decision that implies a (legitimate) tradeoff between the interests of different stakeholders. Also, as precedents show, these formulas can be used even less to invoke the violation of directors’ duties and their liability. This conclusion is inevitable because the very essence of the agency relationship, the crucial function of a director or executive, is exactly mediating and balancing the different and often conflicting interests that converge on the corporation in an uncertain and evolving scenario. The idea of constraining the necessary discretion of directors within the boundaries of a simple purpose declaration is no better than the idea of writing in the contract with a painter that her work must be a masterpiece. Such an attempted shortcut to real value is self-evidently flawed.

Second, multiplying the goals and interests that directors must or can pursue, if it can have any effect at all, by definition increases their flexibility and discretion and makes it easier to justify, ex ante and ex post, very different choices. Without being cynical, from this perspective it is not surprising that these formulas are often welcomed, if not sponsored, by business associations and interest groups linked to managers, executives and entrenched shareholders.

Third, self-regulation and private ordering are often a way to avoid or delay the adoption of more stringent statutory or regulatory provisions. The former might be more or less effective, but they might also create an illusion of responsibility. The risk of putting too much trust into the beneficial consequences of these formulas is a disregard for more biting mandatory provisions, which may be necessary to avoid externalities and other market failures.

À la prochaine…

Le Code civil chinois a été adopté le 28 mai 2020. Il ne rentrera en vigueur qu’au 1er janvier 2021. Deux articles ont attirés mon attention dans une perspective de responsabilité sociétale, articles qui concerne le régime des For-Profit Legal Person (section 2). En substances, voici ce que précisent lesdits articles :

Les actionnaires ne doivent pas intenter à l’intérêt de la personne morale ou à celui des créanciers.

Les entreprises assument une responsabilité sociale.

Order of the President of the People’s Republic of China (No. 45)
The Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China, as adopted at the 3rd Session of the Thirteenth National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China on May 28, 2020, is hereby issued, and shall come into force on January 1, 2021.
President of the People’s Republic of China: Xi Jinping
May 28, 2020
Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China
(Adopted at the 3rd Session of the Thirteenth National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China on May 28, 2020)

Extrait :

• Article 83

An investor of a for-profit legal person shall not damage the interests of the legal person or any other investor by abusing the rights of an investor. If the investor abuses the rights of an investor, causing any loss to the legal person or any other investor, the investor shall assume civil liability in accordance with the law.
An investor of a for-profit legal person shall not damage the interests of a creditor of the legal person by abusing the independent status of the legal person and the limited liability of the investor. If the investor abuses the legal person’s independent status or the investor’s limited liability to evade debts, causing serious damage to the interests of a creditor of the legal person, the investor shall be jointly and severally liable for the legal person’s debts.

• Article 86

In business activities, a for-profit legal person shall comply with business ethics, maintain the safety of transactions, receive government supervision and public scrutiny, and assume social responsibilities.

Merci à mon collègue, le professeur Bjarne Melkevik, de cette information.

À la prochaine…

Gavin Hinks revient de manière intéressante sur un rapport récemment publié par Sustainability Board Report mettant en lumière l’ouverture des grandes entreprises américaines à leurs parties prenantes : « Covid-19 pandemic ‘has accelerated shift to stakeholderism’ » (Board Agenda, 1er juin 2020).

Pour accéder au rapport commenté : ici.

Extrait :

There have been many claims that stakeholder capitalism is the future for business, particularly since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis.

But one group says it now has evidence that stakeholder priorities are beginning to take root, driven by the pandemic. The Sustainability Board Report (SBR), a not-for-profit campaign group, has looked at disclosures from the world’s largest 100 companies to find examples of stakeholder-led decision-making. The report says it found good evidence that a shift towards “stakeholderism” is under way, with 37% of the firms examined revealing “specific corporate action” to respond to stakeholder interests since the advent of Covid-19.

Caution is needed here. The group has no pre-pandemic data for comparison. However, it remains confident that its findings reveal pro-stakeholder moves that were non-existent until recently.

(…) The SBR looked at policies disclosed affecting employees, customers, suppliers and community. The biggest pandemic response appears to have been directed at communities, with 71% of firms disclosing specific action. Johnson & Johnson, for instance, announced a $300m programme aimed at frontline workers.

Customers were the next largest group to receive support, from 37% of firms; employees from 28%; and suppliers seemingly receiving scant support from just one in ten (11%) of the companies checked.

(…) There has even been much speculation that Covid-19 would do much to give the movement energy, given that shutdowns and infection caused companies to reflect much more about their relationship with employees, customers and the wider public. In March, Harvard professor Bill George wrote in Fortune magazine: “If there is any consequence resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s the acceleration of the shift to stakeholder capitalism away from companies’ singular emphasis on shareholders.”

However, the SBR concedes that the data may support one claim that companies cynically use stakeholder capitalism as a PR tool to help cover business as usual. The fact that employees and communities are the greatest focus for “stakeholder” policies means companies could be using it to cover their concern with “perception and reputation”.

“One could conclude that some companies continue to pay lip service to stakeholderism while fundamentally maintaining a short-term profit orientation,” it says.

Evidence may be building but there is some way to go before it can be said that stakeholderism is a permanent fixture of business. Agitation by investment managers may help, but many managers will struggle to see how they will juggle conflicting interests.

That said, the confluence of drivers is perhaps greater now than at any time since the end of the Second World War. More recently, stakeholder capitalism was—and remains—part of the fight against climate change. Business will be called upon to remain at the forefront of that campaign until long after Covid-19 is under control. Stakeholder capitalism is likely to remain a focus of that effort.

À la prochaine…

Les entreprises et les banques canadiennes semblent avoir fait le choix de la RSE et des parties prenantes comme l’illustre cet article : « Canadian companies can care about more than profit, and could pay a price if they don’t «  (Financial Post, 3 juin 2020).

Extrait :

It is not the first time a leader with a fiduciary responsibility waded into the public discourse. In January, Michael McCain, chief executive of Maple Leaf Foods Inc., used Twitter to criticize the White House for creating geopolitical conditions that led to Iran’s military destroying a Ukrainian airliner carrying more than 170 people, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.  

(…) Corporate stances on environmental, social and political issues are becoming more common. And in Canada, a change to corporate law last year freed executives of some companies to expand their mandates beyond simply maximizing shareholder returns without fear of legal reprisal.

(…) “Companies and investors are beginning to recognize that what happens out there in the real world is arguably even more important than what happens on their spreadsheets and terminals,” said Kevin Thomas, chief executive of the Shareholder Association for Research and Education, a not-for-profit group focused on responsible investing. 

The responses by the heads of some of Canada’s biggest companies to the protests in the United States, as well as their various attempts to assist customers during the coronavirus pandemic, come as companies are also embracing more “stakeholder” capitalism, wherein the raison d’être for firms is more than just returning cash to shareholders. 

(…) Stakeholder capitalism was the theme of this year’s World Economic Forum’s gathering in Davos, Switzerland, where one of Masrani’s peers, Royal Bank of Canada chief executive Dave McKay, was in attendance. 

“As trust in governments wanes, and the complexity of society’s problems grows, companies are charting their own course on environment, social and governance issues, to maintain public confidence in business and ensure the prosperity of communities that business serves,” McKay wrote in January. 

On Tuesday, McKay published a post on LinkedIn stating he was “personally outraged at the senseless and tragic deaths in the U.S., which are clearly symptomatic of ongoing racial discrimination and injustice, and I know we are not immune to it in Canada.”

A year ago, Parliament passed legislation that amended the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA), which lays out the legal and regulatory framework for thousands of federally incorporated firms, to spell out in greater detail how directors and company officers could meet their legal responsibility to “act honestly and in good faith with a view to the best interests of the corporation.”

The updated law states that directors and officers may consider shareholders, as well as employees, retirees, creditors, consumers and governments when setting corporate strategy. The law also now states that both the environment and “the long-term interests of the corporation” can be taken into consideration.

À la prochaine…

C’est sous ce titre que les professeurs Gatti et Ondersma amène à une réflexion critique sur l’ouverture de l’objectif des entreprises à la théorie des parties prenantes : « Can a Broader Corporate Purpose Redress Inequality? The Stakeholder Approach Chimera » (4 mars 2020).

Extrait (tiré de l’entrevue suivante « Can a Broader Corporate Purpose Redress Inequality? » :

Our paper also rebuts the premise that shareholder primacy is a key contributor to economic stagnation and inequality. To be sure, shareholder primacy may have contributed to concentration and monopsony in labor markets, excessive executive compensation, the decline in workers’ prerogatives, and tax cuts. But so might the stakeholder approach. Note that a stakeholder approach can hardly fix the central drivers of stagnation and inequality. Globalization, technology, and education cannot be addressed by corporate boardrooms alone. Similarly, collective action dynamics suggest that we cannot expect boards to retreat from further concentration. Experiences with constituency statutes and the battles between large corporations and organized labor tell us that boards won’t improve worker protections without regulation. Implementing legislative or regulatory measures would be much more effective in addressing stagnation and inequality than would be a change in corporate purpose.

In fact, stakeholderism is likely counter-productive. It would give corporations both a sword and a shield with which to defend the status quo.

First, managers and directors can play offense by expanding lobbying efforts, purportedly in the interest of all stakeholders, thus risking corporate capture of the reformist agenda. Second, corporations can deploy stakeholderism defensively by arguing that no direct regulation is needed.  Like others, we take a cynical view of the Business Roundtable’s Statement on Corporate Purpose and Martin Lipton’s “New Paradigm,” which includes regulatory preemption as an express purpose. Meanwhile, a switch to a stakeholder approach would require diverting momentum for change into significant political capital in order for it to be adopted – and once adopted, enshrined in against further change.  Thus, the pursuit of a stakeholder approach would deplete time, energy, and resources necessary to pass reforms to reduce inequality, such as tax, antitrust, and labor measures – precisely the changes most likely to meaningfully distribute power and resources to employees and other weaker constituents.

The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbates this concern.  As many businesses cannot survive without government aid, some have accepted conditions for receiving bailout money, primarily with respect to stock buy-backs and dividend payouts. We speculate that, at some point, businesses might find it convenient to simply offer, in exchange for further government relief, a formal adoption of a stakeholder approach in their charter.  This would preempt more onerous restrictions while preserving the status quo.

As disastrous as the current economic situation is, it also offers a rare opportunity to rethink and possibly reset certain policies. There is little choice but to depart from the tradition of tinkering with corporate governance and instead identify more effective tools to address inequality (mainly in labor, antitrust, and tax laws). This will undoubtedly require greater collaboration across fields and disciplines.

À la prochaine…