Responsabilité sociale des entreprises | Page 9

En ce début d’avril 2020, le Forum Économique Mondial vient de publier une déclaration sur les principes parties prenantes qu’il entend promouvoir durant la crise du COVID-19 : « Stakeholder Principles in the COVID Era ».

Extrait :

To this end, we endorse the following Stakeholder Principles in the COVID Era:

− To employees, our principle is to keep you safe: We will continue do everything we can to protect your workplace, and to help you to adapt to the new working conditions

− To our ecosystem of suppliers and customers, our principle is to secure our shared business continuity: We will continue to work to keep supply chains open and integrate you into our business response

− To our end consumers, our principle is to maintain fair prices and commercial terms for essential supplies

− To governments and society, our principle is to offer our full support: We stand ready and will continue to complement public action with our resources, capabilities and know-how

− To our shareholders, our principle remains the long-term viability of the company and its potential to create sustained value

Finally, we also maintain the principle that we must continue our sustainability efforts unabated, to bring our world closer to achieving shared goals, including the Paris climate agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda. We will continue to focus on those long-term goals.

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Très intéressant article du Financial Times au titre très clair : « Investors and politicians demand coronavirus pay cuts » (4 avril 2020). L’Angleterre démontre un changement de perspective dans le domaine de la rémunération de la haute direction… Un exemple à suivre ?

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L’influent ICGN a pris récemment position sur les conséquences du COVID-19 pour la gouvernance d’entreprise, sachant que ce réseau international fait de cette pandémie un risque systémique (rien de moins !). Vous pourrez lire les préconisation de l’ICGN dans le document suivant : ICGN Viewpoint, « Coronavirus as a new systemic risk: implications for corporate governance and investor stewardship », 12 mars 2020.

Extrait concernant les investisseurs

Despite these negative economic events investors should avoid focusing on the crisis in terms of its short-term shareholder value implications. It is here where a long-term perspective, and perhaps a grounding ethics and values more generally, should also guide investor responses. In the language of modern finance, this may be less an opportunity for investors seeking alpha generation in individual companies than it is a question of addressing ‘beta’ issues—the volatility/stability of the markets and financial system as a whole. This may be fiendishly complicated, but an important guiding principle for investors relates to their fundamental fiduciary duty of care to their beneficiaries. This confirms the importance of taking a long-term perspective, since most ICGN Members, and large institutional investors more generally, are managing assets for pension plans or retirement saving plans, where the investment horizon is intrinsically long-term, or in theory infinite.

It is beyond the scope of this Viewpoint to suggest specific investment or trading strategies for investors in addressing the impacts of COVID-19. There is no generic solution. These will differ depending on individual investor mandates and beneficiary requirements. But from the perspective of investor stewardship and fiduciary duty — and consistent with ICGN’s Global Stewardship Principles and Policy Priorities3 — it is fair to suggest that in reacting to this crisis investors should generally seek to maintain an approach that promotes long-term investment horizons and sustainable value creation for individual companies and markets.

As a practical matter this requires investors to appreciate that companies will be facing difficult questions in response to the impacts of COVID-19. The first priority for managers and boards will be to ensure the company’s own financial sustainability. Investors must also understand that capital allocation questions may surface where compromise is required. Companies may have to choose between cutting dividend payments, cutting capital spending or cutting costs, possibly leading to redundancies. Investors should demonstrate support for companies as they navigate potentially acute financial threats and market pressures. Investors should also avoid encouraging companies to undertake undue risks that might provide a short-term investor benefit but could also jeopardise a company’s financial stability or the sustainability of its business model. This reflects not only some level of enlightened self-interest, but also the moral imperative to contribute positively to the broader threats to public health and social stability.

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Les fonds d’investissement apportent-ils réellement leur soutien aux critères lorsqu’ils exercent leur vote ? Voilà une belle à laquelle un auteur apporte malheureusement une réponse négative : Caleb Griffin, Environmental & Social Voting at Index Funds (February 14, 2020), https://ssrn.com/abstract=. On est donc encore loin des voeux affichés par les gros joueurs de l’industrie semble-t-il…

Résumé :

This Article demonstrates that, despite a considerable marketing focus on their E&S efforts, overall support for E&S proposals is low for the Big Three.

In the 2018-2019 proxy season, Vanguard’s largest funds supported 7.5% of unique shareholder E&S proposals, while State Street’s largest funds supported 22.7% of such proposals and BlackRock’s largest funds supported 7.1% of such proposals. Other funds support E&S proposals at far higher rates (e.g., Deutsche Bank at 77.9%) and far lower rates (e.g., Dimensional at 0%). Given that funds have a fiduciary duty to vote in the “best interests” of their investors, which fund got it right? The surprising answer is that no one knows—not even the funds themselves. Only by blind luck could these funds, who seek no input from their investors and make no serious attempts to discern investor preferences, be accurately reflecting investors’ interests with their voting behaviors. What are the odds that all, or even the majority, of Vanguard’s investors would benefit from just 7.5% of shareholder E&S proposals while State Street’s shareholders would benefit from 22.7% and Deutsche’s shareholders would benefit from 77.9%? What is the likelihood that BlackRock’s SRI investors would be satisfied with support for 27.7% of E&S proposals while Vanguard’s SRI investors were satisfied with support for 2.2% of such proposals? Is it probable that Guggenheim’s investors are well-served by 77.9% of SRI activities while Dimensional’s investors were well-served by exactly 0% of them?

Ultimately, this Article concludes that it is a convenient myth that index fund stewardship teams are even marginally constrained by the “best interests” standard when voting on E&S proposals, and likely other proposals as well. The truth is that these index funds, possessing the power to decide the fate of most E&S proposals, can do as they wish with that power. The status quo urgently needs change to ensure that index funds are truly acting in investors’ best interests. This Article proposes that such constraint should come in the form of greater input from index fund investors.

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Les affaires.com ont offert une belle actualité sur la taxation des GAFA ; « Taxation mondiale des entreprises: vers un taux minimum de 12,5% ». Dans la même période, l’OCDE a proposé d’importants changements au régime fiscal international (voir ici cette actualité sur le site du cabinet Osler). Le Pilier 1 des propositions porte sur la nouvelle répartition des droits d’imposition entre les juridictions du marché. Le Pilier 2 est destiné à faire en sorte que les entreprises qui ont des activités à l’échelle internationale soient assujetties à des taux d’imposition minimaux. Le 8 novembre 2019, l’OCDE a publié un document de consultation publique sur son Pilier 2 : Proposition globale de lutte contre l’érosion de la base d’imposition (« GloBE »). Comme la proposition GloBE pourrait avoir des répercussions fondamentales sur l’ensemble du régime fiscal international, les multinationales devraient en surveiller étroitement l’évolution.

Extrait

La dernière proposition de l’OCDE sur la taxation des multinationales, en particulier du numérique, «est la meilleure base possible» pour aboutir à un accord mondial, selon Bruno Le Maire, ministre français de l’Économie.

«Nous devons trouver un accord sur deux points essentiels: la méthode d’imposition et le taux d’imposition. (…) S’agissant de la méthode d’imposition des entreprises, nous estimons (…) qu’il faut privilégier une taxation par pays. S’agissant du taux, nous proposons comme taux de référence 12,5%», a déclaré le ministre à l’occasion des 10 ans du Forum mondial sur la transparence fiscale organisé par l’OCDE à Paris. Un taux minimum mondial « est un rempart contre le dumping fiscal » entre les Etats, a-t-il défendu.

Ce chiffre de 12,5% représente «un bon point de départ et une bonne référence», a ajouté M. Le Maire, estimant que les États en train de négocier sous l’égide de l’OCDE étaient «tout près d’un compromis» sur le sujet.

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