Normes d’encadrement | Page 2

En Grande-Bretagne, The Business, Innovation, and Skills (BIS) Committee vient de lancer une consultation publique sur la gouvernance d’entreprise : « Corporate Governance inquiry launched ».

The Business, Innovation, and Skills (BIS) Committee has today launched an inquiry on corporate governance, focussing on executive pay, directors duties, and the composition of boardrooms, including worker representation and gender balance in executive positions.

Les questions abordées sont très intéressantes :

Directors Duties

• Is company law sufficiently clear on the roles of directors and non-executive directors, and are those duties the right ones? If not, how should it be amended?
• Is the duty to promote the long-term success of the company clear and enforceable?
• How are the interests of shareholders, current and former employees best balanced?
• How best should the decisions of Boards be scrutinised and open to challenge?
• Should there be greater alignment between the rules governing public and private companies? What would be the consequences of this?
• Should additional duties be placed on companies to promote greater transparency, e.g. around the roles of advisors. If so, what should be published and why? What would the impact of this be on business behaviour and costs to business?
• How effectively have the provisions of the 1992 Cadbury report been embedded? How best can shareholders have confidence that Executives are subject to independent challenge?
• Should Government regulate or rely on guidance and professional bodies to ensure that Directors fulfil their duties effectively?

Executive pay

• What factors have influenced the steep rise in executive pay over the past 30 years relative to salaries of more junior employees?
• How should executive pay take account of companies’ long-term performance?
• Should executive pay reflect the value added by executives to companies relative to more junior employees? If so, how?
• What evidence is there that executive pay is too high? How, if at all, should Government seek to influence or control executive pay?
• Do recent high-profile shareholder actions demonstrate that the current framework for controlling executive pay is bedding in effectively? Should shareholders have a greater role?

Composition of Boards

• What evidence is there that more diverse company boards perform better?
• How should greater diversity of board membership be achieved? What should diversity include, e.g. gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality, disability, experience, socio-economic background?
• Should there be worker representation on boards and/or remuneration committees? If so, what form should this take?
• What more should be done to increase the number of women in Executive positions on boards?

Attention : la réponse est à envoyer pour le 26 octobre 2016 !

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Sur le blogue de l’Université d’Oxford, Idoya Ferrero-Ferrero et Robert Ackrill publie une synthèse de leur dernier article : « Is Europeanization Though Soft-Law a Reality in Corporate Governance Policies? ». La question qu’il aborde est simple mais très pertinente pour les juristes : Est-ce que la soft law européenne en matière de gouvernance d’entreprise fait évoluer les cadres juridiques étatiques (et ce, sans avoir besoin d’édicter des règles contraignantes !) ? La réponse est oui…

Europeanization addresses the impacts of EU membership on national politics and policies, via both the processes by which EU decision-making manifests itself at the national level; and the outcomes of that EU decision-making. Over time, as EU membership and policy scope have expanded, new approaches to policy-making have been developed and, therefore, new channels created by which Europeanization can occur. One such has been the use of ‘soft law’ processes. These have allowed for greater discussion of ‘sensitive’ policy issues, where national policy sovereignty continues to dominate, given that these discussions do not result in legal texts binding on the member states. That said, the purpose of soft law is still to deliver national policy change. Which begs the question – can they work?

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Jeffrey N. Gordon connu pour ses écrits dans le domaine de la gouvernance d’entreprise offre une belle tribune dans le Morning Consul du 22 mars 2016. Intitulé « Shareholder Activism, the Short-Termist Red-Herring, and the Need for Corporate Governance Reform », cet écrit revient sur l’activisme des hedge funds et la concentration dont ils font l’objet.

Jeffrey Gordon demande qu’une réforme de la gouvernance d’entreprise soit mise en place, non pour contrer l’activisme mais pour réformer le conseil d’administration et lui donner un rôle nouveau `s’assurer de la crédibilité de la haute direction.

It’s the attack of hedge funds, shareholder activists looking for short term gain even at the expense of investments that would produce higher returns over the long run, and, along the way, would lead to employment gains and then wage gains. What follows, then, is a prescription for changes in tax policy and legal rules that would hamper the activists, all to promote the “long run.” But this is a misdiagnosis, which fails to realize that the shareholders activists’ success reveals a major shortfall in corporate governance for large public corporations.

(…) Reform should move not in the direction of closing down the activists who are bringing the news about this design flaw. Rather we should develop a new role for the board: credibly evaluating and then verifying that management’s strategy is best for the company (or making changes if it is not). Boards need directors who will have that credibility, which is won through deep knowledge about the company and its industry and an appropriate time commitment.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Dans un article du 11 septembre 2015 (« Crise financière : la justice américaine veut poursuivre les banquiers individuellement »), le journaliste Stéphane Lauer du Monde nous apprend que la numéro 2 du département de la justice a émis une directive pour inciter les procureurs à poursuivre judiciairement les banquiers et dirigeants d’entreprise indélicats.

Si les amendes infligées aux banques de Wall Street se sont multipliées ces derniers mois pour atteindre plusieurs dizaines de milliards de dollars, les responsables réellement impliqués dans les excès de la crise financière ont, pour la plupart, échappé aux sanctions. Cette situation a entretenu une profonde frustration dans l’opinion sur le fonctionnement de la justice américaine et sur la sincérité de la promesse de Barack Obama, lors de son élection à la présidence américaine, de punir les fautifs. Pour tenter de répondre à cette frustration, le ministère de la justice a diffusé, mercredi 9 septembre, une directive qui encourage les procureurs à poursuivre individuellement les banquiers et dirigeants d’entreprise indélicats.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian