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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

Excellent texte auquel je viens d’accéder rédigé par Yvon Allaire et François Dauphin daté du 11 août 2016 et intitulé : “Making Say-on-Pay Vote Binding: a Good Idea?” (IGOPP).

Petit extrait :

The challenge of reading and understanding the particulars of executive compensation has become far more daunting. Indeed, for the 50 largest (by market cap) companies on the TSX in 2015 that were also listed back in 2000, the median number of pages to describe their compensation went from 6 in 2000 to 34 pages in 2015, ranging all the way up to 66 pages. Investors with holdings in dozens or hundreds of stocks face a formidable task. The simplest way out is either to vote per the stock’s performance or, more likely, rely on the recommendation of proxy advisory firms (which also base their “advice” on relative stock market performance. (…)

Boards of directors, compensation committees and their consultants have come to realize that it is wiser and safer to toe the line and put forth pay packages that will pass muster with proxy advisory firms. The result has been a remarkable standardization of compensation, a sort of “copy and paste” across publicly listed companies. Thus, most CEO pay packages are linked to the same metrics, whether they operate in manufacturing, retailing, banking, mining, energy, pharmaceuticals or services. For the companies on the S&P/TSX 60 index, the so-called long term compensation for their CEO in 2015 was based on total shareholder return (TSR) or the earnings per share growth (EPS) in 85% of cases. The proxy advisory firm ISS has been promoting these measures as the best way to connect compensation to performance. (…)

At a more fundamental level, the setting of pay policies should be the preserve of the board, as Canadian corporate law clearly states. When egregious pay packages are given to executives, a say-on-pay vote, compulsory or not, binding or not, will always be much less effective than a majority of votes against the election of members of the compensation committee. But that calls upon large investment funds to show fortitude and cohesiveness in the few instances of unwarranted compensation which occur every year.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

L’organisation moyenne perd chaque année 5 % de ses revenus en raison de la fraude et de la corruption, selon l’Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. Il n’est pas surprenant que les organismes de réglementation à l’échelle mondiale se concentrent de plus en plus sur la fraude et s’attendent à ce que les organisations mettent en œuvre des programmes efficaces de lutte contre la fraude. En outre, ces organismes accroissent leur coopération pour mettre en œuvre des lois anticorruption grâce auxquelles les coupables sont poursuivis pour leurs actes, y compris les dirigeants et les administrateurs qui sont responsables de l’environnement dans lequel ces crimes se produisent.

En cas de fraude ou de corruption, les administrateurs peuvent être tenus personnellement responsables s’il est démontré qu’ils n’ont pas fait preuve de la diligence voulue dans le cadre de leurs responsabilités visant la mise en œuvre des programmes et des contrôles appropriés de lutte contre la fraude et la corruption.

Votre conseil d’administration a-t-il une bonne compréhension des risques liés à la fraude et à la corruption? Quelles mesures votre organisation devrait-elle prendre pour les atténuer?

Dans son À l’ordre du jour du conseil de juillet 2016, Deloitte propose une revue des « Programmes efficaces de lutte contre la fraude et la corruption ».

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Belle étude annuelle de Pwc consacrée à la criminalité économique : « Global Economic Crime Survey 2016 – Adjusting the Lens on Economic Crime:  Preparation brings opportunity back into focus ».

Today more than ever before, a passive approach to detecting and preventing economic crime is a recipe for disaster. To underscore this fact, our survey uncovered a widespread lack of confidence in local law enforcement – a phenomenon that is not limited to regions or level of economic development. The message is clear: the burden of preventing, protecting and responding to economic crime rests firmly with organisations themselves. Our survey this year focuses on three key areas – Cybercrime, Ethics and compliance programmes and Anti-Money Laundering – and explores certain common themes, including managing the risks associated with the pervasion of technology; what it means to conduct business responsibly across a widening business landscape; and integrating ethical conduct into decision-making.

In addition to highlighting specific areas of economic crime worth focusing on, we emphasise the things you can do better to tackle them – implementing more sophisticated and effective measures that can not only reduce these risks, but also bring the benefits of a more threat-aware business, confident of its defences in a changing world.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian