Gouvernance | Page 4

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

Les entreprises japonaises feraient-elles l’objet d’une gouvernance de type anglo-américaine ? C’est ce qu’il semble à la lecture de cet article : « Shareholders put Japan’s corporate governance to the test » (Nikkei Asian Review, 25 juin 2016).

Voici quelques extraits :

Many stockholders at security company Secom’s annual meeting Friday demanded explanations over why then-Chairman Shuji Maeda and then-President Hiroshi Ito were fired in May, despite the company’s strong performance last fiscal year. (…) Secom voluntarily created an executive nomination and compensation committee, but has not made the members’ names public. Attendees raised questions over the effectiveness of the company’s governance structure. « There’s still room for improvement in the selection process for executives, » one said.

Shareholders at Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings’ meeting the same day focused on earnings power and dividends. The chemical company had logged extraordinary losses from restructuring its petrochemical business, while return on equity fell under 5% for the year ended in March. Shareholders demanded more details over the loss, and urged the company to try to raise its stock price. (…)

Kobe Steel logged a group net loss last fiscal year, and its ROE has long remained low. Just 87.3% of shareholders voted for the proposal to retain Chairman and President Hiroya Kawasaki, down 8 percentage points from last year. (…)

Toshiba came under harsh criticism at its Wednesday meeting, with shareholders blaming the company’s top-down culture and the lack of independence at its accounting department for its bookkeeping scandal. Only 87.06% of shareholders voted to reappoint President Satoshi Tsunakawa,

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Dans Les Échos.fr du 14 juin 2016, la journaliste Laurence Boisseau propose une belle synthèse 2016 des assemblées annuelles tenues en France : « « Say on pay », mesures anti-OPA… le bilan des AG 2016 »

2016 restera, dans l’esprit des investisseurs et du patronat, comme l’année où la polémique sur le salaire de Carlos Ghosn, PDG de Renault, a poussé l’Etat à légiférer. Et ce pour que l’avis des actionnaires sur ce point devienne désormais contraignant et non plus simplement consultatif. Pourtant, au global, les signes de protestation sont moindres qu’en 2015. « Deux fois moins de résolutions ont été rejetées soit 17 contre 44 en 2015 », souligne l’« Hebdo des AG », à paraître ce soir. Quant aux résolutions dissidentes ajoutées par des actionnaires, elles sont moins nombreuses. Un consensus de façade ? Pour Bénédicte Hautefort, éditrice de l’« Hebdo des AG », « ce consensus tient davantage à un travail de fond réalisé très en amont entre entreprises et investisseurs anglo-saxons permettant désamorcer les conflits ».

Je vous laisse découvrir la suite…

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Le message a le mérite d’être clair ! Le blog of Manifest, the proxy voting agency se montre pour le moins critique (!) d’une réforme américaine qui vient d’être proposé et qui vise notamment à mettre en place un encadrement des agences de conseil en vote : « Global investors condemn US attempt to undermine their voting decisions »

The US House of Representatives’ Finance Services Committee last week passed a series of  Bills which seek to repeal large chunks of the Dodd-Frank Act which was passed in response to the 2008 financial crash.

The bills would amend the mandate on public companies to provide shareholders with a vote on executive compensation to occur only when the company has made a material change to the executive compensation; repeal the Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) authority to issue rules on proxy access and repeal the mandate that publicly-traded companies disclose the ratio of median versus chief executive officer pay.

Part of the package of legislative proposals is the Corporate Governance Reform & Transparency Act of 2016 would, if passed by Congress and signed by President Obama, require mandatory SEC registration for proxy advisory firms such as Manifest wishing to operate in the US.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Selon une étude parue le 8 juin 2016 sur le blog de Harvard (« Women Directors and Participation on Key Committees »), la féminisation des CA progressent mais davantage dans les comités du CA.

Women corporate directors globally are showing greater proportional gains on occupying key board committees than on boards overall, according to a new analysis by leading governance and ESG data and analytics provider Institutional Shareholder Services.

Point intéressant sue le Canada :

Among markets outside Europe, boards of Australian companies showed the greatest proportional gains for overall female boardroom representation between 2014 and 2016 with a 4.9 percent increase, and with female directors now making up just under 21 percent of all directorships at those companies. Canadian companies analyzed saw the greatest growth outside of Europe in female representation on audit committees, jumping 5.6 percentage points during that same period.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

En mai 2016, l’Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators (ICSA) a publié avec Ernst & Young un rapport sur le rôle du comité de nomination : « The Nomination Committee – Coming out of the Shadows ».

While its role may be less clearly defined than that of the audit committee, and its profile lower than that of the remuneration committee, it is arguably the most important of the three. It plays a pivotal role in appointing directors to the board and, if the board lacks the right balance, knowledge, skills and attributes, the likelihood of it and its committees operating effectively is greatly reduced.

Concernant sa mission et ses membres, il est précisé les points suivants :

1. What the appropriate role of the committee should be, e.g., whether the committee should look at executive talent if it does not already do so, and whether the board would benefit from combining the committee into a nomination and governance committee.

2. Whether the following processes are clearly linked: the discussion of current board composition and future composition in light of the company’s strategy, the executive and senior talent succession planning and company strategy, the outcome of the board evaluation exercise and board succession plans, and the link between board evaluations and development and training plans.

3. The existence of a two-pronged approach to identify succession plans in both emergency and steady-state situations.

À propos de la planification de la relève et la détection de talent, le rapport mentionne relativement au comité :

1. The extent to which nomination committee looks across the market and internally to identify four or five potential successors to the CEO.

2. How deeply into the organisation the committee should be looking to identify future talent.

3. The best way to develop the skills of future executive leaders in the business.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Le 7 mars 2016, a été introduit le projet H.R. 4718 Gender Diversity in Corporate Leadership Act of 2016  par Carolyn B. Maloney à la Chambre des représentants.

To require the Securities and Exchange Commission to establish a Gender Diversity Advisory Group to study and make recommendations on stratégies to increase gender diversity among the members of the board of directors of issuers, to amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to require issuers to make disclosures to shareholders with respect to gender diversity, and for other purposes.

Pour suivre l’évolution législative de ce projet, cliquez ici.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian