engagement et activisme actionnarial Normes d'encadrement normes de droit
Actionnaires : faut-il renforcer leur pouvoir ?
Ivan Tchotourian 15 avril 2016
Le choix de renforcer le pouvoir des actionnaires est-il « le » bon choix ? Au travers de l’exemple de la banque d’investissement Morgan, Jill Fisch aborde cette thématique dans une de ces dernières études intitulé : « The Mess at Morgan: Risk, Incentives and Shareholder Empowerment » (ECGI Law Working Paper No. 311/2016, mars 2016).
The financial crisis of 2008 focused increasing attention on corporate America and, in particular, the risk-taking behavior of large financial institutions. A growing appreciation of the “public” nature of the corporation resulted in a substantial number of high profile enforcement actions. In addition, demands for greater accountability led policymakers to attempt to harness the corporation’s internal decision-making structure, in the name of improved corporate governance, to further the interest of non-shareholder stakeholders. Dodd-Frank’s advisory vote on executive compensation is an example.
This essay argues that the effort to employ shareholders as agents of public values and, thereby, to inculcate corporate decisions with an increased public responsibility is misguided. The incorporation of publicness into corporate governance mistakenly assumes that shareholders’ interests are aligned with those of non-shareholder stakeholders. Because this alignment is imperfect, corporate governance is a poor tool for addressing the role of the corporation as a public actor.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial Normes d'encadrement rémunération
La révolte de BP !
Ivan Tchotourian 15 avril 2016
Bonjour à toutes et à tous, en voilà une nouvelle : « BP investors revolt over chief Bob Dudley’s 20% pay rise » (Financial times, 14 avril 2016). La révolte des actionnaires est en marche dans le domaine de la rémunération des dirigeants des grandes entreprises américaines. BP vient d’en fournir une illustration…
Angry shareholders mounted an unprecedented protest against BP on Thursday, rebelling against a 20 per cent pay rise for chief executive Bob Dudley despite the oil group making its worst ever loss.
Investors voted against the company’s pay decisions for the first time in living memory, with 59 per cent of proxy votes cast going against BP’s decision to pay Mr Dudley nearly $20m for 2015, a year in which the company ran up a $5.2bn loss.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial mission et composition du conseil d'administration rémunération
Volkswagen : la rémunération en baisse ?
Ivan Tchotourian 11 avril 2016
Fortune nous apprend que l’entreprise Volkswagen chercherait à diminuer les bonus (diminution de 30 % sur une base volontaire) qui devaient être versés aux dirigeants suite au scandale auquel fait face cette entreprise : « Volkswagen CEO Seeks to Cut Board Bonuses ».
Volkswagen Chief Executive Matthias Mueller will push for a significant reduction in bonuses for the carmaker’s management board on Monday, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The proposal being put forward at a supervisory board steering committee meeting follows criticism from one of Volkswagen’s major shareholders, the state of Lower Saxony, about intentions to pay bonuses to top managers while the company grapples with the diesel emissions crisis and prepares to cut costs elsewhere.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial Gouvernance
Changement climatique : les actionnaires bougent !
Ivan Tchotourian 9 avril 2016
Les temps changent. Longtemps ignorée, la question climatique s’invite dans les assemblées générales de compagnies pétrolières. Alors que Shell et BP sont sous la pression de la coalition Aiming for A , laquelle rassemble de grands investisseurs soucieux d’investir dans des entreprises engagées dans la lutte contre le réchauffement planétaire, ExxonMobil et Chevron vont devoir soumettre à leurs actionnaires une résolution sur les risques financiers liés au dérèglement climatique.
Pour rappel, proche de cette thématique, j’avais publié il y a quelques temps un billet sur le blogue
Contact de l’Université Laval portant sur le désinvestissement et la place des investisseurs institutionnels dans la promotion de la lutte contre le changement climatique :
« Entreprises et défi climatique: la fin d’une ère? ».
Voilà que l’actualité récente rend compte d’une tendance qui prend de plus en plus d’ampleur. Initiative discrète, lancée au départ par des étudiants américains, elle gagne désormais du terrain. Organisations, entreprises, financiers, individus… même l’acteur et militant Leonardo DiCaprio a joint ce mouvement à la fin septembre! De quelle tendance s’agit-il? Du développement d’une campagne de désinvestissement des énergies fossiles.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial mission et composition du conseil d'administration Normes d'encadrement normes de droit
Vote majoritaire : un moyen de rendre le CA plus responsable ?
Ivan Tchotourian 5 avril 2016
Un peu de lecture pour ce matin ? Je vous renvoie à cet intéressant article : Stephen Choi, New York University Jill Fisch, University of Pennsylvania and ECGI Marcel Kahan, New York University and ECGI Edward Rock, University of Pennsylvania, « Does Majority Voting Improve Board Accountability? », Law Working Paper No. 310/2016, March 2016.
Directors have traditionally been elected by a plurality of the votes cast. This means that in uncontested elections, a candidate who receives even a single vote is elected. Proponents of “shareholder democracy” have advocated a shift to a majority voting rule in which a candidate must receive a majority of the votes cast to be elected. Over the past decade, they have been successful, and the shift to majority voting has been one of the most popular and successful governance reforms. Yet critics are skeptical as to whether majority voting improves board accountability. Tellingly, directors of companies with majority voting rarely fail to receive majority approval – even more rarely than directors of companies with plurality voting. Even when such directors fail to receive majority approval, they are unlikely to be forced to leave the board. This poses a puzzle: why do firms switch to majority voting and what effect does the switch have, if any, on director behavior?
We empirically examine the adoption and impact of a majority voting rule using a sample of uncontested director elections from 2007 to 2013. We test and find partial support for four hypotheses that could explain why directors of majority voting firms so rarely fail to receive majority support: selection; deterrence/accountability; electioneering by firms; and restraint by shareholders.
Our results further suggest that the reasons for and effects of adopting majority voting may differ between early and later adopters. We find that early adopters of majority voting were more shareholder-responsive than other firms even before they adopted majority voting. These firms seem to have adopted majority voting voluntarily, and the adoption of majority voting has made little difference in their responsiveness to shareholders responsiveness going forward. By contrast, for late adopters, we find no evidence that they were more shareholder-responsive than other firms before they adopted majority voting, but strong evidence that they became more responsive after adopting majority voting.
Differences between early and late adopters can have important implications for understanding the spread of corporate governance reforms and evaluating their effects on firms. Reform advocates, rather than targeting the firms that, by their measures, are most in need of reform, instead seem to have targeted the firms that are already most responsive. They may then have used the widespread adoption of majority voting to create pressure on the nonadopting firms.
Empirical studies of the effects of governance changes thus need to be sensitive to the possibility that early adopters and late adopters of reforms differ from each other and that the reforms may have different effects on these two groups of firms.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial Gouvernance Normes d'encadrement
Nouvelle politique du Council of Institutional Investors
Ivan Tchotourian 4 avril 2016
Le Council of Institutional Investors (CII) a adopté le 23 mars 2016 de nouvelles politiques destinées à protéger l’intérêt des actionnaires.
Pour résumer les choses :
Company going public should have a « one share, one vote » structure, simple majority vote requirements, independent board leadership and annual elections for board directors.
Pour en savoir plus, cliquez ici.
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Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial Gouvernance objectifs de l'entreprise
Les investisseurs institutionnels, acteurs du long terme ?
Ivan Tchotourian 2 avril 2016
Dans une très récente tribune parue dans The Globe and Mail, la professeure Janis Sarra affirme que : « Institutional investors must lead our transition to long-term sustainability ». Dans le cadre de cet article, elle réagit à l’annonce par le président de l’Université de Toronto (Meric Gertler) de l’orientation des 6.5 milliards de dollars gérés par son institution au profit de la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique.
Institutional investors have an important role to play in charting a new course in corporate approaches to climate change, aimed at long-term sustainability. Institutional investors, such as pension funds, are by their nature “patient capital” because of their size in the market and illiquidity of their shares. Collectively, they can have a significant influence on corporate decision makers in tackling climate change.
Aside from our collective public interest in a sustainable world, there is a business case to be made. At risk is a significant portion of the value of diversified investment portfolios. Howard Covington of Cambridge and Raj Thamotheram of Oxford have suggested that value at risk due to climate change in just 15 years could result in a permanent reduction of up to 20 per cent in portfolio value. Hence, there are compelling reasons for capital-markets participants to aggressively press for immediate and comprehensive action. Indeed, it can be argued that institutional investors have a fiduciary duty to act to prevent risk to their portfolios from anthropogenic climate change. The strategies need to be multifold: decarbonization of electricity, a massive move to clean energy or lower carbon fuels, less waste in all sectors, improvement of forests and other natural carbon sinks.
There is a nascent but growing type of institutional shareholder activism called “forceful stewardship,” in which investors are demanding a recasting of fiduciary obligation away from short-term shareholder returns toward ethical obligations and reduction of long-term environmental risks. Forceful stewardship involves helping directors and officers of all types of businesses understand that it is a breach of their fiduciary duties to ignore long-term environmental risks such as climate change. This activism by our most powerful advocates in the market is an important development in the potential to change the current course of climate change.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
