Cet article, publié par Gerry Hansell, associé de la firme The Boston Consulting Group, est paru sur le site du HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation le 13 mars 2014.
L’auteur montre clairement que les comportements des grands investisseurs activistes peuvent avoir des effets positifs, à long terme, sur plusieurs organisations qui ne semblent pas profiter de la pleine valeur de leur positionnement stratégique.
Il y a bien sûr des comportements activistes qui détruisent de la valeur : ces interventions de « hit-and-run » doivent être contrées fermement par une direction avisée.
Mais il faut bien reconnaître qu’il existe de plus en plus « d’activisme constructif » qui produit des résultats prodigieux et qui attire la participation des investisseurs institutionnels. L’article donne beaucoup d’exemples d’interventions réussies.
L’auteur met aussi l’accent sur cinq (5) moyens à envisager par la direction pour mieux se préparer à des telles actions. Essentiellement, une veille stratégique plus poussée et une meilleure communication avec les actionnaires devraient permettre l’identification de lacunes organisationnelles et révéler de nouvelles opportunités d’affaires.
Voici un extrait de cet article que je vous invite à lire pour vous faire une idée plus juste de ce nouveau paramètre de la gouvernance.
Many corporate executives and board members view activist investors as little more than bullies with calculators: they seem to hunt in packs, force disruptive and risky changes, and use simplistic benchmarks as their call to action.
Yet their ranks have grown rapidly, and activist investors now attack even the largest and most successful companies. Worldwide, the assets managed by activist investors have increased sevenfold over the past decade, from $12 billion to $85 billion. Since 2005, the number of activist campaigns in the U.S. has increased 15 percent per year, reaching a total of 144 in 2012. These investors have pushed for the return of excess cash to shareholders at Apple; urged restructuring through spinoffs and divestitures at PepsiCo, Sony, Timken, and McGraw-Hill; and called for the replacement of senior management or board members at Abercrombie & Fitch, Yahoo, and Sotheby’s.
Although some campaigns have backfired, resulting in significant corporate damage (JCPenney is one dramatic example), activists are creating value often enough to continue to attract institutional funds and expand their influence. Indeed, collaboration between activists and traditionally more passive investors is blurring the definition of investor activism. Leading pension funds, such as CalPERS and the Ontario Municipal Employee Retirement System (OMERS), are not only allocating capital to activist hedge funds, they are publicly teaming with activists to campaign for change.
In light of these trends, most large companies can expect to face an activist campaign in the normal course of business. How should they prepare? One common approach is to put an “activist response” team in place, often in collaboration with legal counsel and investment bankers, and to periodically run fire drills with the board in anticipation of future activist interventions. But such reactive procedural moves are like the old “duck and cover” civil-defense drills: They give the illusion of safety without providing it.
There is a more effective response: Senior managers and the board can borrow directly from the activist’s playbook by critically examining their company’s portfolio, balance sheet, and governance in much the same way that an activist investor would, and then preemptively making necessary changes. By engaging in what we call do-it-yourself activism, senior management can make a company less attractive to activists by making it more attractive to long-term shareholders.
Articles reliés au sujet de l’activisme :
Gouvernance | Jacques Grisé 