objectifs de l’entreprise | Page 6

L’Afrique du Sud l’affirme et l’assume : la primauté actionnariale doit être remise en cause et la gouvernance d’entreprise doit s’ouvrir aux parties prenantes. Dans son dernier rapport de novembre 2016 (King IV Report on Corporate Governance), l’institut des administrateurs de sociétés sud-africaines ne dit pas autre chose !

Vous pourrez lire l’intéressante synthèse suivante : « King: Shareholders not owners of companies » (10 novembre 2016, Fin24 city press).

Shareholders are not the owners of a company – they are just one of the stakeholders, Prof Mervyn King said on Thursday at the 15th BEN-Africa Conference, which took place in Stellenbosch.

« I realised long ago that the primacy of shareholders could not be the basis in the rainbow nation, » said King. The corporate governance theory of shareholder primacy holds that shareholder interests should have first priority relative to all other corporate stakeholders.

He said when he started with his report on corporate governance the issue was that the majority of SA’s citizens were not in the mainstream of the economy. His guidelines on corporate governance, therefore, had to be for people who had never been in that mainstream of society.

The King Reports on Corporate Governance are regarded as ground-breaking guidelines for the governance structures and operation of companies in SA. The first was issued in 1994, the second in 2002, the third in 2009 and the fourth revision was released last week.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Intéressant ce que relaie le Time. Il y a un des candidats à l’élection présidentielle américaine a invoqué le devoir fiduciaire pour justifier les politiques d’évitement fiscales qu’il a mises en œuvre pendant de nombreuses années : « Donald Trump’s ‘Fiduciary Duty’ Excuse on Taxes Is Just Plain Wrong ». Qu’en penser ? Pour la journaliste Rana Foroohar, la réponse est claire : « The Donald and his surrogates say he has a legal responsibility to minimize tax payments for his shareholders. It’s not a good excuse ».

It’s hard to know what to say to the New York Times’ revelation that Donald Trump lost so much money running various casino and hotel businesses into the ground in the mid-1990s ($916 million to be exact) that he could have avoided paying taxes for a full 18 years as a result (which may account for why he hasn’t voluntarily released his returns—they would make him look like a failure).

But predictably, Trump did have a response – fiduciary duty made me do it. So, how does the excuse stack up? Does Donald Trump, or any taxpayer, have a “fiduciary duty,” or legal responsibility, to maximize his income or minimize his payments on his personal taxes? In a word, no. “His argument is legal nonsense,” says Cornell University corporate and business law professor Lynn Stout,

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Marc T. Moore offre un beau papier sur la place de la valeur actionnariale en Grande-Bretagne dans une perspective historique : « Shareholder Primacy, Labour and the Historic Ambivalence of UK Company Law » (Oxford University, 20 septembre 2016).

Most directors and senior managers of British companies would likely regard it as trite law that, in undertaking their functions, they are accountable first and foremost to their employer firm’s general body of shareholders. It follows that the interests of other corporate constituencies – and, in particular, those of employees – must ultimately cede to those of shareholders in the event of conflict. Although frequently taken for granted today, the lexical priority that the British company law framework affords to the interests of shareholders is remarkable, not least when viewed alongside the correspondingly disempowered corporate governance status of labour in the UK.

On first reflection, it is somewhat curious that the interests of employees have not figured more prominently within British company law, especially when one considers the general political disposition of the country in modern times. Throughout the course of the last century, the UK has witnessed 37 years of Labour government (or 42 years if one includes Labour’s participation in the wartime coalition government). And although the UK is acknowledged on the whole as having a more neo-liberal (ie right-wing) political orientation than many of its northern European counterparts, it nonetheless has a comparatively strong social-democratic (ie left-wing) political tradition in relation to other English-speaking and former-Commonwealth countries, at least since the Second World War. It is thus not unreasonable to expect that, at some point during the post-war era, democratic public policy measures might have been taken to effect the direct integration of worker interests into the heart of the British corporate legal structure.

Une de ses conclusion est intéressante :

However, whilst the centrality of shareholders’ interests to the doctrinal and normative fabric of contemporary UK company law is both manifest and incontrovertible, this has curiously not always been the case. With respect to the fundamental question of the proper corporate objective (that is, as to whose interest British company directors are expected to serve while carrying out their functions), UK company law up until 2006 adopted a highly ambiguous position. Moreover, British company law has in the fairly recent past come precariously close to adopting a radically different board representation model, in which worker interests would formally have shared centre-stage with those of shareholders in a similar vein to the traditional German corporate governance model.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Michael J. Mauboussin et Alfred Rappaport ont publié il y a quelques jours un article dans la Harvard Business Review qui revient sur la valeur actionnariale : « Reclaiming the Idea of Shareholder Value ». Les auteurs insistent sur l’importance de définir et de communiquer clairement l’objectif des entreprises.

Corporate governance issues are constantly in the headlines. Activist investors challenge management strategies. Investors and others ask why companies binge on buybacks while skimping on value-creating investment opportunities. But discussions of corporate governance invariably miss the real problem: most public companies have extensive governance procedures but no governing objective. As a result, there is no sound basis for stakeholders, including shareholders, to assess the performance of the company and its executives.

Corporate governance is a system of checks and balances that a company designs to ensure that it faithfully serves its governing objective. The governing objective is the cornerstone upon which the organization builds its culture, communications, and choices about how it allocates capital. Think of it as a clear statement of what a company is fundamentally trying to achieve.

Today there are two camps that aim to define the idea of governing objective, but neither is effective. The first believes the company’s goal is to maximize shareholder value. Countries that operate under common law, including the United States and the United Kingdom, lean in this direction.

The second advocates that the company balance the interests of all stakeholders. Countries that operate under civil law, including France, Germany, and Japan, tend to be in this camp.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

Pour celles et ceux que le mouvement progressistes intéressent, plusieurs juristes de renom s’y intéressent :

• Claude Champaud, dir, L’entreprise dans la société du 21^e siècle, Bruxelles, Larcier, 2013; Claude Champaud, Manifeste pour la doctrine de l’entreprise : Sortir de la crise du financialisme, Bruxelles, Larcier, 2011.
• Isabelle Corbisier, « L’entreprise : Quelles sont ses valeurs fondatrices et ses finalités ? » dans Nicolas Thirion, dir, Crise et droit économique, Bruxelles, Larcier, 2014, 175 et aussi Isabelle Corbisier, La société : contrat ou institution ? Droits étatsuniens, français, belge, néerlandais, allemand et luxembourgeois, Bruxelles, Larcier, 2011.
• Simon Deakin, « The Juridical Nature of the Firm » dans Thomas Clarke et Douglas Branson, dir, The SAGE Handbook of Corporate Governance, Londres, SAGE, 2012, 113.
• Kent Greenfield, « Saving the World With Corporate Law » (2008) 57 Emory LJ 947; Kent Greenfield, « New Principles for Corporate Law » (2005) 1 Hastings Bus LJ 87.
• Andrew R Keay, The Corporate Objective: Corporations, Globalisation and the Law, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2013.
• Catherine Malecki, Responsabilité sociale des entreprises : Perspectives de la gouvernance d’entreprise durable, Paris, LGDJ, 2014.
• David K Millon, « Why Is Corporate Management Obsessed with Quarterly Earnings and What Should be Done About It? » (2002) 70 Geo Wash L Rev. 890; David K Millon, « New Directions in Corporate Law: Communitarians, Contractarians, and Theorisis in Corporate Law » (1993) 50 Wash. & Lee L Rev 1373 ; David K Millon, « Redefining Corporate Law » (1991) 24 Ind L Rev 233; David K Millon, « Theories of the Corporation » (1990) 39 Duke LJ 201.
• Lawrence E Mitchell, Corporate Irresponsibility: America’s Newest Export, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2001 ; Lawrence E Mitchell, dir, Progressive Corporate Law, Boulder, Westview Press, 1995.
• Beate Sjåfjell et Benjamin Richardson, Company Law and Sustainability: Legal Barriers and Opportunities, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2015 et Beate Sjåfjell, Towards A Sustainable EU Company Law: A Normative Analysis of the Objectives of EU Law, with the Takeover Directive as a Test Case, European Company Law Series, Kluwer Law International, 2009.
• Lynn A Stout, The Shareholder Value Myth, San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler, 2012 ; Lynn A Stout, « Why We Should Stop Teaching Dodge v. Ford » (2008) 3:1 Va L & Bus Rev 163 ; Lynn A Stout, « Takeovers in the Ivory Tower: How Academics Are Learning Martin Lipton May be Right » (2005) 60 Bus Lawyer 1435 ; Lynn A Stout, « Share price as a Poor Criterion for Good Corporate Law » (2005) UCLA School of Law Document de travail No 05-7, en ligne: <http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=660622> ; Lynn A Stout, « Bad and Not-So-Bad Arguments for Shareholder Primacy » (2002) 75:5 S Cal L Rev 1189.
• Alain Supiot, La gouvernance par les nombres, Paris, Éditions Fayard, 2015 ; Alain Supiot, dir, L’entreprise dans un monde sans frontières – Perspectives économiques et juridiques, Collection les sens du droit, Paris, Éditions Dalloz, 2015.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian

« The American corporation has been transformed by globalization and new technology. But equally powerful is the belief on Wall Street and in boardrooms that the sole responsibility of a corporation is to maximize profits for its shareholders ». Ce résumé du rapport de Marketplace « The price of profits » illustre parfaitement les 5 beaux chapitres (pas trop longs et accessibles à tout public) qu’il nous est donné de lire. Revoilà la primauté de la valeur actionnariale sur le devant de la scène pour être critiquée…

Listen to business news on cable TV, and you’ll hear bankers, fund managers and CEOs talk about a corporation’s legal responsibility to “maximize shareholder value.” The idea that the product of a corporation is profits is gospel. It’s taught in business school. But it’s not true.

(…) If jobs were the first target, how to spend a company’s profits was next. A corporation can invest in itself and grow or — what? Giant investment funds pressed for higher returns — higher share prices. An increasingly favorite strategy was to spend profits buying back the company’s own shares. It was financial engineering: fewer shares, higher share price.

The former corporate raider Carl Icahn, for example, started buying shares of Apple in 2013, and eventually owned more than 50 million, nearly 1 percent. He pressured Apple to buy back shares — and Apple is spending more than $100 billion doing so.

Icahn sold his shares this spring. Economist William Lazonick, the author of a shareholder-value analysis, “Profits Without Prosperity,” noted that Icahn was a share-renter, not a shareholder. He never invested a dollar in Apple itself.

Icahn said his investment in Apple shares netted him $2 billion. Apple? Its shares are below what the company paid for them. So far, Apple is a loser.

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian