Un grand débat fait présentement rage dans le monde des actionnaires activistes : la dénonciation des amendements apportés aux règlements internes de l’entreprise (Bylaws) qui ont pour buts de disqualifier les candidats aux postes d’administrateurs qui sont rémunérés par les actionnaires activistes en vue de leur élection lors des assemblées annuelles.
L’article ci-joint, publié par Carl Icahn dans le Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, tente de justifier la façon de faire des activistes en montrant que cette approche est le nouveau moyen de défense utilisé par certaines organisations pour bloquer la venue de nouveaux administrateurs « dissidents ». L’adoption de cet amendement se fait sans le consentement des actionnaires.
Je vous propose donc la lecture de la position de M. Icahn lui-même sur cette question. Il présente un ensemble d’arguments soutenant le droit des actionnaires à une représentation qui relève d’eux, et non de la direction ou des administrateurs en place !
Quel est votre point de vue sur les moyens de défense utilisés par les organisations qui sont les cibles des actionnaires activistes organisés ? Voici un court extrait de l’article pour vous mettre en contexte.
Disqualifying Dissident Nominees: A New Trend in Incumbent Director Entrenchment
There are many good, independent boards of directors at public companies in the United States. Unfortunately, there are also many ineffectual boards composed of cronies of CEOs and management teams, and such boards routinely use corporate capital to hire high-priced “advisors” to design defense mechanisms, such as the staggered board and poison pill, that serve to insulate them from criticism. Recently, these advisors have created a particularly pernicious new mechanism to protect their deep-pocketed clients—a bylaw amendment (which we call the “Director Disqualification Bylaw”) that disqualifies certain people from seeking to replace incumbent members of a board of directors.
Under a Director Disqualification Bylaw, a person is not eligible for election to the board of directors if he is nominated by a shareholder and the shareholder has agreed to pay the nominee a fee, such as a cash payment to compensate the nominee for taking the time and effort to seek election in a proxy fight, or compensation that is tied to performance of the company. [1]
We believe that the Director Disqualification Bylaw is totally misguided. It is absolutely offensive for an incumbent board to unilaterally adopt a Director Disqualification Bylaw without shareholder approval, and shareholders should also reject a Director Disqualification Bylaw if their incumbent board puts one up for a vote in the future. For the reasons explained below, we believe it is more appropriate for shareholders to continue, as they have in the past, to evaluate candidates individually based on their merits, including their experience, relationships and interests, all of which is required to be fully disclosed in a proxy statement.
As of November 30, 2013, thirty-three (33) public companies had unilaterally (i.e. without shareholder approval) amended their bylaws to include a Director Disqualification Bylaw. [2] In response, on January 13, 2014, Institutional Shareholder Services (“ISS”) stated that it may recommend a vote against or withhold from directors that adopt a Director Disqualification Bylaw without shareholder approval. In adopting this new policy position, ISS noted, as we do below, that “the ability to elect directors is a fundamental shareholder right” and that Director Disqualification Bylaws “unnecessarily infringe on this core franchise right.”
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Carl Icahn is the majority shareholder of Icahn Enterprises. The following post is based on a commentary featured today at the Shareholders’ Square Table.
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