Voici un relevé des dix billets les plus populaires sur mon site cette semaine . Quel est votre choix ?
English: Port aux Choix lighthouse, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada Français : Phare de Port au Choix, Terre-Neuve at Labrador, Canada (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Vous trouverez, ci-joint, une publication de la NACD qui présente les grands défis qui attendent les administrateurs de sociétés au cours des prochaines années. Ce document est un recueil de lectures publié par les partenaires de la NACD : Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc., KPMG’s Audit Committee Institute, Marsh & McLennan Companies, NASDAQ OMX, Pearl Meyer & Partners et Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP.
Vous y trouverez un ensemble d’articles très pertinents sur les sujets de l’heure en gouvernance. Chaque année, la NACD se livre à cet exercice et publie un document très prisé !
Voici comment les auteurs se sont répartis les thèmes les plus « hot » en gouvernance.
English: 1166 Avenue of the Americas (Marsh & McLennan Headquarters) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
What to Do When an Activist Investor Comes Calling par Heidrick & Struggle
KPMG’s Audit Committee Priorities for 2013 par KPMG’s Audit Committee Institute
Board Risk Checkup—Are You Ready for the Challenges Ahead ? par Marsh & McLennan Companies
Boardroom Discussions par NASDAQ OMX
Paying Executives for Driving Long-Term Success par Pearl Meyer & Partners
What Boards Should Focus on in 2013 par Weil, Gotshal and Manges, LLP
Today, directors are operating in a new environment. Shareholders, regulators, and stakeholders have greater influence on the boardroom than ever before. In addition, risks and crisis situations are occurring with greater frequency and amplitude. Directors have a responsibility to ensure their companies are prepared for these challenges—present and future.This compendium provides insights and practical guidance from the nation’s leading boardroom experts—the National Association of Corporate Directors’ (NACD’s) strategic content partners—each recognized as a thought leader in their respective fields of corporate governance.
Denis Lefort, CPA, expert-conseil en Gouvernance, audit et contrôle, porte à ma connaissance un article concernant une importante décision du Financial Reporting Council au Royaume-Uni. Cette décision concerne la relation entre les auditeurs externes et les auditeurs internes.
The Financial Reporting Council has banned internal auditors from providing « direct assistance » to external audit teams. The new rules will come into effect in June 2014.
Bonne lecture. Vos commentaires sont les bienvenus. Voici le sommaire de l’étude.
Internal audit staff can no longer work on external audit teams.The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has prohibited external auditors from using internal audit staff as “direct assistance” members of the audit team. It is doing this to create a clearer division of responsibility between internal and external audit teams to safeguard against conflicts of interest. It is aiming both to ensure the independence of the external auditor and promote greater confidence in the integrity of the audit for investors.
The prohibition comes into effect for audits of financial statements for periods ending on or after 15 June 2014.
“Prohibiting direct assistance supports stakeholders’ expectation that external auditors should be free from threats to their independence, » said Nick Land, FRC board member and chairman of the Audit and Assurance Council. « In determining the effective date of the prohibition, the FRC has taken into consideration that planning the use of the work of internal auditors may take place early in the financial period being reported on.”
The ban follows the announcement in February that the FRC would adopt the revised international auditing standards on the external auditor’s use of work carried out by internal audit. It also announced that it would consider going beyond the international standard by prohibiting the direct use of internal audit staff on the external audit team. Feedback to the consultation suggested that there could be logistical issues for audits that were under way when the prohibition began. The FRC therefore decided to delay implementation until 2014.
Other revisions to the FRC’s auditing and ethical standards to reflect the revised international auditing standards on the external auditor’s use of work carried out by internal audit will also have the same effective date.
Êtes-vous intéressés à comprendre les comportements à court terme adoptés par les organisations en réponse aux nombreuses occasions qu’ont les gens de profiter de situations non-éthiques, à l’encontre de la création de valeur à long terme ?
Si vous vous demandez quels sont les facteurs-clés qui conduisent aux abus reliés à des comportements de court terme et, surtout, si vous voulez connaître les moyens susceptibles d’améliorer la situation, l’article de Malcolm Salter, professeur à la Harvard Business School, vous fascinera.
Vous pouvez lire le résumé qui suit. Si votre curiosité l’emporte, vous pouvez télécharger le document au complet.
Researchers and business leaders have long decried short-termism: the excessive focus of executives of publicly traded companies—along with fund managers and other investors—on short-term results. The central concern is that short-termism discourages long-term investments, threatening the performance of both individual firms and the U.S. economy.
English: Detail from Corrupt Legislation. Mural by Elihu Vedder. Lobby to Main Reading Room, Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C. Main figure is seated atop a pedestal saying « CORRUPT LEGISLATION ». Artist’s signature is dated 1896. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the paper, How Short-Termism Invites Corruption…and What To Do About It, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, I argue that short-termism also invites institutional corruption—that is, institutionally supported behavior that, while not necessarily unlawful, erodes public trust and undermines a company’s legitimate processes, core values, and capacity to achieve espoused goals. Institutional corruption in business typically entails gaming society’s laws and regulations, tolerating conflicts of interest, and persistently violating accepted norms of fairness, among other things.
My argument starts by describing the twin problems of short-termism and institutional corruption and showing how the latter has led to a diminution of public trust in many of our leading firms and industries. Focusing most specifically on the pervasive gaming of society’s rules (with examples drawn from the finance industry, among others), I then explain how short-termism invites gaming and identify the principal sources of short-termism in today’s economy. The most significant sources of short-termism that collectively invite institutional corruption include: shifting beliefs about the purposes and responsibilities of the modern corporation; the concomitant rise of a new financial culture; misapplied performance metrics; perverse incentives; our vulnerability to hard-wired behavioral biases; the decreasing tenure of institutional leaders; and the bounded knowledge of corporate directors, which prevents effective board oversight.
I next turn to the question of what is to be done about short-termism and the institutional corruption it invites. In this final section of the paper, I discuss reforms and recommendations related to the improvement of board oversight; the adoption of compensation principles and practices that can help mitigate the destructive effects of inappropriate metrics, perverse incentives, and hard-wired preferences for immediate satisfactions; the termination of quarterly earnings guidance; and the elimination of the built-in, short-term bias embedded in our current capital gains tax regime.
Aujourd’hui, je vous propose la lecture de l’excellent article d’Ira Millstein* de la firme Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, paru dans Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, sur la saga JPMorgan Chase qui a alimenté les discussions en gouvernance au cours des derniers mois. Maintenant que la poussière sur l’échec de la séparation des rôles de PCD et PCA et sur l’opportunité d’utiliser un « administrateur principal » (Lead Directeur) est tombée, il y a certainement lieu d’en tirer des leçons très pertinentes pour le futur. C’est ce que fait admirablement bien l’auteure en précisant les différences fondamentales entre les rôles.
Dans le cas de JPMorgan Chase, la bataille de M. Dimon pour conserver ses fonctions de CEO et de Chairman a été féroce. Celui-ci a gagné son pari parce que les circonstances lui étaient favorables (le timing était bon). Selon l’auteure, il aurait été préférable de faire voter les actionnaires sur la séparation des rôles, pour le prochain CEO. L’article montre (1) qu’il est préférable d’avoir une séparation des rôles, (2) que la nomination d’un administrateur principal n’est pas la solution miracle parce que celui-ci n’aura jamais tout le pouvoir et toute la légitimité d’un président du conseil indépendant et (3) que dans les cas où un administrateur principal est requis, il faut définir son rôle en lui donnant le pouvoir et l’autorité nécessaire.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase (Photo credit: jurvetson)
Voici un extrait de cet article ainsi qu’un tableau montrant les comparaisons entre deux modèles de gouvernance : le modèle du président de conseil indépendant et le modèle dual « Chair/CEO ».
Substantial work was done on this issue by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), in its Blue Ribbon Commission Report “The Effective Lead Director.” The role of the lead director as viewed in that report is not as strong a position as the independent chair, as indicated in a comparison chart included as Appendix A (below). In comparing the key duties of a typical independent chair to a lead director, the powers and duties of a lead director fall short in the following areas:
Power to call a board meeting: Unlike the chair, the lead director typically does not have convening power but only suggests to the chair/CEO that a meeting be called.
Control of the board agenda and board information: Unlike the chair who bears responsibility and authority for determining both the board agenda and the information that will be provided, the lead director collaborates with the chair/CEO and other directors on these issues.
Authority to represent the board in shareholder and stakeholder communications: Typically the chair/CEO represents the board with shareholders and external stakeholders; the lead director plays a role only if specifically asked by the chair/CEO or the board directly.
Appendix A Comparison of the Non-Executive Chair and the Chair/CEO Models
*Ira Millsteinis a senior partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP and co-chair of the Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at Columbia Law School.
Voici un article intéressant publié dans ASEAN Briefing le 11 juin 2013 et qui présente un système d’évaluation de la qualité de la gouvernance dans un certain nombre de pays asiatiques, basé sur cinq (5) principes-clés. Cette façon de juger de la valeur de la gouvernance par secteur d’activité m’a intéressée.
La méthodologie utilisée n’est pas suffisamment décrite mais la pondération accordée aux cinq dimensions a attiré mon attention, particulièrement le fait que l’on accorde 40 % des points à la « responsabilité du conseil d’administration ».
Vous trouverez ci-dessous les objectifs poursuivis ainsi que la pondération retenue, suivi de l’exemple indonésien. Je vous invite donc à lire cet article et à partager vos impressions d’une telle démarche d’évaluation de la gouvernance. Le lien suivant vous mènera à la version complète du rapport : ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard – rapport complet.
The ASEAN Capital Markets Forum (ACMF) and the Asian Development Bank recently established a joint initiative called the ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard. Corporate governance refers to the system of governance which controls and directs corporations, and monitors their actions and policies.
The stated objective of the ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard is to:
(1) Raise the corporate governance standards and practices of ASEAN publicly listed companies (PLCs);
(2) Give greater international visibility to well-governed ASEAN PLCs and showcase them as investable companies; and
(3) Complement other ACMF initiatives and promote ASEAN as an asset class.
English: The flags of ASEAN nations raised in MH Thamrin Avenue, Jakarta, during 18th ASEAN Summit, Jakarta, 8 May 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Scorecard judges five key principles of corporate governance in each nation:
Rights of shareholders (10 percent);
Role of stakeholders (10 percent);
Equitable treatment of shareholders (15 percent);
Disclosure and transparency (25 percent); and
Responsibilities of the board (40 percent)
The percentages indicate the allocated weight of each principle in determining the Scorecard of each country.
The ASEAN countries that participated in the initiative include Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Please find below a summary of how the ASEAN countries fared.
The higher scores listed for banks and SOEs are a result of those sectors being held under closer scrutiny by the Indonesian Central Bank and Ministry of SOEs, which significantly enhances the corporate governance practices of these companies.
The report found that a majority of PLCs in Indonesia still do not practice corporate governance at an international standard. Many of the corporate governance practices included in the Scorecard are voluntary practices, but the report details that Indonesian PLCs often only implement the mandatory practices, or the bare minimum necessary.
Furthermore, Indonesia’s corporate governance code does not have a “comply or explain” requirement, which has resulted in many PLCs not referring to the code at all. Therefore, they are potentially unaware of the other corporate governance practices that can be voluntarily implemented.
English: Tactical Risk Management model, comparing and valuing 10 different risk or opportunity propositions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Vous pouvez consulter les résultats de l’enquête menée par Aon sur la gestion globale des risques en 2013 : Global Risk Management Survey 2013.
The ability to anticipate opportunities and effectively respond to threats is critical for organizations to grapple with new challenges. Fact-based insights are the best way to ensure optimal decision making. Aon’s 2013 Global Risk Management Survey report is part of this process, capturing the latest risk trends and priorities facing companies around the world. The report unveiled the top 10 risks now and three years in the future. Conducted in Q4 2012, the web-based survey gathered input from 1,415 respondents — a 47 percent increase in respondents from the 2011 survey — from 70 countries in all regions of the world and was conducted in 10 languages.
In addition to identifying the top risk concerns facing companies today, the survey findings also cover the following topics:
How companies identify and assess risk
Approach to risk management and board involvement
Risk management functionsInsurance markets
Risk financing
Global programs
Captives
The survey is still open for participation and risk decision makers are invited to participate in the survey and will receive a complimentary customized report based on their industry, geography and revenue size. To take the survey, visit aon.com/grms2013.
Note: When the survey page loads, please select « First Time Users Click Here » to start the survey.
Denis Lefort, CPA, expert-conseil en Gouvernance, audit et contrôle, vient de me faire parvenir l’édition 2013 de l’étude de Thompson/Reuters sur l’audit interne. On le sait, le domaine des contrôles internes et de l’audit interne prennent de plus en plus d’importance dans la gouvernance des sociétés.
Ce document sera donc très utile à tout administrateur soucieux de parfaire ses connaissances de l’état de la situation en 2013 dans le monde.
Bonne lecture. Vos commentaires sont les bienvenus. Voici le sommaire de l’étude.
Regulatory guidance and industry best practice expects internal audit to take a higher-level view of risks and controls in a firm.
Process assurance and monitoring activities remain key areas of focus for internal audit functions.
Focus on corporate governance is down from last year.
Immature risk management processes in firms and insufficient input by internal audit functions.
Weaknesses in risk reporting to the board.
Insufficient communication with other risk and control functions.
Challenge to audit committees to reassess the activities of internal audit.
Thomson Reuters Accelus surveyed more than 1,100 internal audit practitioners worldwide in February and March 2013 to canvass their views on the state of internal audit and their greatest challenges for the year ahead.
The responses received covered 76 countries including Europe, the Americas, Australasia, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The respondents represented firms from a wide set of industries including financial services, manufacturing, government, education, life sciences, energy and other highly-regulated industries. Feedback came from internal audit departments of all sizes, ranging from fewer than five auditors to global conglomerates exceeding 100 auditors.
Oracle Audit (Photo credit: Fenng(dbanotes))
The world of internal audit is diverse and challenging. The global financial crisis has sparked a reassessment of the internal audit function’s role in financial services in particular, but the deepening crisis has impacted all industries. The focus from policymakers and regulators alike has been on culture, corporate governance and risk management, together with a growing acknowledgement of the need for a strong, well-resourced independent audit function operating — and in particular reporting— in close coordination with other risk and compliance functions.
Expectations have changed and continue to change. On the one hand chief executives, boards, and audit and risk committees all have increased expectations of the depth and quality of the work which needs to be performed by internal audit functions, while on the other regulators and policy makers are placing more reliance on internal audit functions not only to ensure “fair play” in organizations but also to undertake their business at board level and to become actively involved with high-level strategic risk and corporate governance issues.
The Thomson Reuters Accelus Internal Audit Survey 2013 analyses the replies from respondents and highlights the specific challenges and priorities that the current fog of information has presented the industry. There are lessons to be learnt: When compared with the detailed yardstick of the policies and guidance published, the results present a challenging picture, and one that requires action at all levels. From the audit committee’s oversight role to the detailed testing behind audit findings, internal audit functions — many of which need to be able to accomplish more with fewer resources — are urged to review what they do and reprioritize to gain maximum effectiveness.
« We do want to see the internal audit profession taken seriously within the institutions that we regulate. We want it to have an appropriate profile and thereby bolster the standing of the professions, because it is important. »
(Andrew Bailey, deputy governor for prudential regulation at the Bank of the England and chief executive officer of the UK Prudential Regulation Authority, in an interview which appeared in Audit and Risk Magazine, May 2012).
Cet article rédigé par Geoffrey KIEL, James BECK et Jacques GRISÉ (1) et paru dans les Documents de travail de la Faculté des sciences de l’administration en 2008 est toujours d’actualité.
Il présente un guide pratique des questions clés que les conseils d’administration doivent prendre en considération lorsqu’ils planifient une évaluation.
On met l’accent sur l’utilité d’avoir des évaluations bien menées ainsi que sur les sept étapes à suivre pour des évaluations efficaces d’un conseil d’administration et des administrateurs. Bonne lecture.
Lorsqu’une crise se produit au sein d’une société, comme celles qu’ont connues Nortel et Hollinger International, les intervenants, les médias, les organismes de réglementation et la collectivité se tournent vers le conseil d’administration pour trouver des réponses. Étant donné que ce dernier est le chef décisionnel ultime de la société, il est responsable des actions et du rendement de la société.
Le défi actuel que doivent relever les conseils d’administration consiste à accroître la valeur des organisations qu’ils gouvernent. Grâce à l’évaluation du rendement, les conseils d’administration peuvent s’assurer qu’ils ont les connaissances, les compétences et la capacité de relever ce défi.
Plusieurs guides et normes de pratiques exemplaires reconnaissent cette notion. Ainsi, la Commission des valeurs mobilières de l’Ontario indique dans les lignes directrices sur la gouvernance des sociétés (NP 58-201) que « le conseil d’administration, ses comités et chacun de ses administrateurs devraient faire l’objet régulièrement d’une évaluation à l’égard de leur efficacité et de leur contribution ».
L’évaluation du conseil d’administration est trop souvent perçue comme un mal nécessaire – un processus mécanique consistant à cocher des points sur une liste qui, en bout de ligne, a peu de valeur réelle pour le conseil d’administration si ce n’est pour satisfaire aux exigences en matière de conformité. Toutefois… un processus efficace d’évaluation du conseil d’administration peut donner lieu à une transformation.
Une publication du Collège des administrateurs de sociétés (CAS), sous forme de questions et réponses sur la gouvernance, a été conçue à l’intention des administrateurs nommés par le gouvernement du Québec comme membre d’un conseil d’administration d’une société d’État ou d’un organisme gouvernemental. Celle-ci vise à répondre aux questions les plus courantes qu’un administrateur nouvellement nommé peut légitimement se poser en matière de gouvernance. On y indique qu’ « une évaluation faite à intervalles périodiques est essentielle pour assurer le maintien d’une gouvernance efficace » (2).
Cet article offrira une approche pratique en matière d’évaluations efficaces des conseils d’administration et des administrateurs en appliquant un cadre comportant sept étapes qui pose les questions clés que tous les conseils d’administration devraient prendre en considération lorsqu’ils planifient une évaluation. Même les conseils d’administration efficaces peuvent tirer profit d’une évaluation bien menée.
Comme nous l’avons résumé dans le tableau 1, une évaluation menée adéquatement peut contribuer considérablement à des améliorations du rendement à trois niveaux : organisation, conseil d’administration et administrateur. Selon Lawler et Finegold « les conseils qui évaluent leurs membres et qui s’évaluent ont tendance à être plus efficaces que ceux qui ne le font pas ». Toutefois, il faut souligner que ces avantages ne sont possibles qu’au moyen d’une évaluation du conseil d’administration menée de manière appropriée; si l’évaluation n’est pas faite correctement, cela peut causer de la méfiance parmi les membres du conseil d’administration et entre le conseil lui-même et la direction.
Une publication de l’École d’administration publique du Québec (ENAP), produite en collaboration avec le Collège des administrateurs de sociétés (CAS), présente une section traitant de l’évaluation de la performance du conseil d’administration (3).
Selon les auteurs, « L’évaluation est une composante essentielle d’une saine gouvernance d’entreprise. Elle permet de jeter un regard sur la façon dont les décisions ont été prises et sur la manière d’exercer la gestion des activités de l’organisation et ce, dans une perspective d’amélioration continue… Il incombe au président du conseil d’instaurer une culture d’évaluation du rendement et de la performance. Pour ce faire, il doit veiller à la mise en place d’un processus d’évaluation clair, à l’élaboration de règles et d’outils pertinents, à la définition des responsabilités de chaque intervenant dans le processus d’évaluation, à la diffusion de l’information et à la mise en place des correctifs nécessaires ». Dans cette publication, on présente dix outils détaillés d’évaluations (questionnaires) qui concernent les groupes cibles suivants :
1. l’évaluation du conseil
2. l’évaluation du fonctionnement du conseil
3. l’évaluation du président du conseil
4. l’évaluation d’un membre de conseil
5. l’évaluation du comité de gouvernance et d’éthique
6. l’évaluation du comité de vérification
7. l’évaluation du comité des ressources humaines
8. l’évaluation du fonctionnement d’un comité
9. l’évaluation d’un membre de comité
10. l’évaluation du président d’un comité
_______________________________________
(1) Geoffrey Kiel, Ph.D., premier vice-chancelier délégué et doyen de l’École d’administration, University of Notre Dame, Australie, et président de la société Effective Governance Pty Ltd, James Beck, directeur général, Effective Governance Pty Ltd, Jacques Grisé, Ph.D., F.Adm.A., collaborateur spécial du Collège des administrateurs de sociétés (CAS), Faculté des sciences de l’administration, Université Laval, Québec.
(2) Collège des administrateurs de sociétés, Être un administrateur de sociétés d’état : 16 questions et réponses sur la gouvernance, Faculté des sciences de l’administration, Université Laval, 2007.
(3) ENAP, Les devoirs et responsabilités d’un conseil d’administration, Guide de référence, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, 2007.
Aujourd’hui, je vous propose la lecture de l’article d’Adam Davidson, publié dans le New York Times du 29 mai 2013. L’auteur présente une excellente analyse des facteurs qui influencent la rémunération du PCD et montre comment le conseil d’administration doit jouer un rôle capital dans l’établissement d’une rémunération juste et efficace.
Voici un extrait de l’article. Bonne lecture. Vos commentaires sont les bienvenus.
« Most C.E.O.’s used to be able to handle their pay negotiations in private, but the Dodd-Frank reforms, which were passed in 2010, now give shareholders the right to vote on executive compensation. This has helped usher in a so-called “say on pay” revolution, which tries to stop executives from making more money when their companies don’t do that well. In Switzerland, a recent nationwide referendum, passed 2 to 1, gave shareholders the right to restrict the pay for the heads of Swiss companies. The European Union is likely to vote on a similar measure by the end of the year.
Economically speaking, this is more than a little odd. Shareholders should be motivated to pay their C.E.O.’s according to their success. But doing so involves a tricky dance known to game theorists as the principal-agent problem: how does an employer (the principal) motivate a worker (the agent) to pursue the principal’s interest? This principal-agent problem is everywhere. (Do you pay a contractor per day of work or per project? Do you pay salespeople by the hour or on commission?) It becomes particularly thorny when the agent knows a lot more about his job than the principal.
Boards and chief executives don’t often suffer from Costanza-like ineptitude, but they are harder to rein in. They are often rewarded when they don’t succeed but are not usually penalized enough when they do a lackluster job. Lucian Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School and perhaps the leading academic voice for corporate reform, told me that the problem isn’t (just) greed. It’s the boards of directors. The directors are supposed to represent the stockholders’ interests, he says, but most public firms, where C.E.O.’s can have considerable influence over board appointments, neuter those interests. They are structured so that a board tends to side with its chief.
Excessive C.E.O. pay, Bebchuk says, is a manifestation of a deeper problem. A bad C.E.O. pay package can cost shareholders millions; a corporation that is being poorly overseen by its board can cost billions. “Shareholder rights in the U.S. are still quite weak relative to what they are in other advanced economies,” he explained. His solution is to pass laws that make it easier for shareholders to vote out boardmembers who fail to discipline underperforming chief executives. This, he argues, will motivate them to push back against executives that do an underwhelming job. At the very least, all the attention would keep boardmembers and C.E.O.’s on their toes. And a multitude of better-run companies would result in billions, perhaps trillions, of wealth returned to the economy ».
Une étude conduite par le Center for Leadership Development and Research de la Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance, et The Miles Group montre que les administrateurs évaluent piètrement la performance de leur PCD (CEO) sur les dimensions de la gestion des talents et de leur capacité (ou leur volonté) à créer les conditions favorables à l’engagement de leur conseil.
L’on s’en doute, les priorités sont toujours accordées aux performances financières. Ce n’est pas surprenant ! Seulement 5 % de la note finale est attribuée aux activités relatives au développement des talents et à la planification de la relève… Si l’on croit vraiment que ce sont deux activités stratégiques clés, il faut leur accorder une part plus substantielle de l’évaluation. Sinon, on lance le message que ce que l’on mesure est ce qui importe !
Voici un sommaire des points saillants de l’étude. Pour obtenir plus de détails sur les résultats de l’étude, je vous invite à consulter le site de Stanford. Bonne lecture.
Boards rate CEOs high in decision-making, low in talent development
More than 160 CEOs and directors of North American public and private companies were polled in the 2013 Survey on CEO Performance Evaluations, which studied how CEOs themselves and directors rate both chief executive performance as well as the performance evaluation process. When directors were asked to rank the top weaknesses of their CEO, “mentoring skills” and “board engagement” tied for the #1 spot. “This signals that directors are clearly concerned about their CEO’s ability to mentor top talent,” says Stephen Miles, founder and chief executive of The Miles Group.“Focusing on drivers such as developing the next generation of leadership is essential to planning beyond the next quarter and avoiding the short-term thinking that inhibits growth.”
Little weight given to customer service, workplace safety, and innovation in CEO evaluations.
While accounting, operating, and stock price metrics are assigned high value by boards, other factors generally hold little worth when boards rate their CEOs. “Seeming important things such as product service and quality, customer service, workplace safety, and even innovation are used in less than 5% of evaluations,” says Professor Larcker.
CEOs and boards believe the evaluation process is balanced.
Eighty-three percent (83%) of directors and 64% of CEOs believe that the CEO evaluation process is a balanced approach between financial performance and nonfinancial metrics, such as strategy development and employee and customer satisfaction.“Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that the CEO evaluation process is not that balanced,” says Professor Larcker. “Amid growing calls for integrating reporting and corporate social responsibility, companies are still behind the times when it comes to developing reliable and valid measures of nonfinancial performance metrics.”
CEOs failing to engage boards.
“Board relationships and engagement” tied with “mentoring and development skills” as the #1 weakness in CEOs. “This serious disconnect between management and the boardroom has multiple negative ramifications,” says Mr. Miles. “Board engagement is absolutely vital to the function of the CEO – and to the health of a company. How can the board understand what’s going on in the company if the CEO is not engaging?”
Directors lukewarm when comparing their CEOs against peer group.
Forty-one percent (41%) of directors believe that their CEO is in the top 20% of his or her peers, while 17% believe that their CEO is below the 60th percentile. “For almost half of directors to say that their CEO is just ‘in the top 20 percent’ is not exactly a ringing endorsement,” says Mr. Miles. “The board hires the CEO – they should believe that they have the individual in that job who is absolutely the best, or can quickly become the best. The fact that nearly 20% of directors feel that their CEO ranks below the top 40% means that a lot of CEOs should be preparing their resumes.”
Disconnect in how CEOs and directors regard the evaluation process.
Sixty-three percent (63%) of CEOs versus 83% of directors believe that the CEO performance process is effective in their companies. “Nearly a third of CEOs don’t think that their evaluation is effective,” says Professor Larcker. “The success of an organization is dependent on open and honest dialogue between the CEO and the board. It is difficult to see how that can happen without a rigorous evaluation process.”
10% of companies say they have never evaluated their CEO.
“Given their fiduciary duties, it’s strange that any company would not evaluate its CEO,” says Professor Larcker. “The CEO performance evaluation should feed all sorts of board decisions, including goal setting, corporate performance measurement, compensation structure, and succession planning. Without an evaluation of the CEO, how can the board claim to be monitoring a corporation?”
CEOs highly likely to agree with the results of their performance evaluation.
Only 12% of CEOs believe that they are rated too high or too low overall, and almost half (49%) do not disagree with any area of their performance evaluation. “Shareholders have to wonder at the objectivity of the evaluation process,” says Professor Larcker. “It’s hard to believe that boards are pushing CEOs on their evaluations if they pretty much agree with their evaluation.”
Only two-thirds of CEOs believe that their own performance evaluation is a meaningful exercise.
“Even though a high percentage of directors and CEOs think that the CEO evaluation process is meaningful, this number really should be 100%,” says Mr. Miles. “Every board has the power to meaningfully evaluate the CEO – whether doing it themselves, or bringing in someone to do it, or some combination thereof.”
Directors unlenient on violations of ethics but more forgiving of CEOs with legal or regulatory violations that occur on their watch.
“A significant minority of directors – 27 percent – say that unexpected litigation against the company would have no impact on their CEO’s performance evaluation,” says Professor Larcker, while « approximately a quarter of directors (24%) say that unexpected regulatory problems would also have no impact. » By contrast, all directors (100%) say that their CEO’s performance evaluation would be negatively impacted by ethical violations or a lack of transparency with the board.
Ce billet présente le résumé d’une étude, produite par le Conference Board et récemment publiée sur le site de Harvard Law School Forun on Corporate Governance and Financial Régulation, laquelle fait état de la planification de la relève des PCD (CEO). L’étude intitulée CEO Succession Practices (2013 Edition) analyse les cas de rotation des PCD dans les entreprises du S&P 500. Le rapport présente les résultats en quatre sections :
Les tendances en matière de planification de la relève de 2000 à 2012 ainsi que la relation entre la performance des entreprises et le départ ou l’arrivée d’un PCD;
Les pratiques en matière de succession du PCD en 2012 : les responsabilités du conseil, le rôle du PCD démissionnaire au conseil et la nature de la divulgation aux actionnaires;
Une analyse des particularités de plusieurs cas célèbres de succession de PCD en 2012;
Divers exemples montrant comment l’activisme des actionnaires a une influence grandissante sur le processus de la planification de la relève en 2012.
Despite steady average CEO succession rates, dismissals hit a 10-year high in 2012.
In 2012, 53 CEOs in the S&P 500 left their post. The rate of CEO succession in calendar year 2012 was 10.9 percent, consistent with the average number of annual succession announcements from 2000 through 2011. The rate of CEO dismissals varies widely across the 2000–2012 period, ranging from 40.0 percent in 2002 to 13.2 percent in 2005 (on average, 24.5 percent for the period). In 2012, 31.4 percent of all successions were non-voluntary departures, the highest rate recorded since 2003.
Companies in the services industries experienced higher than average CEO succession rates.
The rate of CEO succession had significant variation across industry groups during 2012. The services industry had a succession rate of 18.0 percent in 2012, higher than its 13-year average of 16.2 percent. By contrast, the extraction industry, which includes mining, petroleum products, and natural gas companies, had a succession rate of only 5.6 percent during 2012, lower than its 13-year average of 9.5 percent.
Companies increasingly look outside to hire their CEOs.
In 2012, 27.1 percent of S&P 500 companies that faced a CEO succession hired an outsider for the top job. While the rate confirms a trend recorded since the 1970s, it is much higher than the 19 percent reported in 2011. This finding may suggest that there is a need to continue to strengthen companies’ leadership development practices. The heated pay-for-performance debate of the last few years has induced boards of directors to increase the rigor of the CEO selection process: the growing percentage of outsiders chosen as new CEOs may show that directors don’t always like what they find within the companies’ ranks. Moreover, a number of companies that underwent a succession event in 2012 selected a director from their own board as the new CEOs. The director-turned-CEO succession model provides companies with a chief executive who is familiar with corporate strategy and key stakeholders, thereby reducing leadership transition risk.
CEO departure may offer opportunity to reconsider board leadership model.
Only 18.8 percent of successions in 2012 involved the immediate joint appointment of an individual as CEO and chairman of the board of directors. Based on succession announcements, one-third of departing CEOs remained as board chairman for at least a brief transition period, typically until the next shareholder meeting, while several departing CEOs retained significant influence with the company as board chairman. In some cases (Iron Mountain), the succession was used as an opportunity to reconsider the board leadership structure and adopt a CEO/board chairman separation model. Alternatively, the boards of Altria Group, Boston Scientific, CA Inc., and Murphy Oil retained the expertise of the departing CEO via a consulting contract rather than a position on the board.
Formal succession process is credited for the choice of new CEO, except when the CEO is hired from outside.
Perhaps surprisingly, only 22.9 percent of succession announcements among S&P 500 companies in 2012 explicitly stated that the incoming CEO was identified through the board’s succession planning process. This is noticeably lower than the 32.4 percent of successions that referred to the succession planning process in 2011. There appears to be a link between inside promotion to the CEO position and the succession planning process—31.6 percent of announcements that mention the board’s role in the succession planning process involve an insider appointment as incoming CEO, whereas no successions that involve an outside hire reference succession planning.
Mantatory CEO retirement policies remain seldom used.
Mandatory CEO retirement policies based on age are an infrequent element of CEO succession plans. Only 11.8 percent of manufacturing companies and 8 percent of nonfinancial services companies adopt an age-based mandatory retirement policy for CEOs; the number is lower in the financial industry. The highest level of policy adoption (19.4 percent) is reported by manufacturing and nonfinancial companies with annual revenue of $20 billion or greater.
Je vous propose la lecture d’un essai sur les principaux courants de pensées en gouvernance des sociétés au cours des soixante dernières années. Ce document, écrit par Douglas M. Branson de l’École de Droit de l’Université de Pittsburgh et paru dans le Social Science Research Network (SSRN), représente certainement l’un des points de vue les plus articulés sur la recherche d’une explication valable à la thèse de Berle et Means concernant la séparation de la propriété de celle du contrôle des firmes.
Bien que l’essai soit rédigé dans un style assez provocateur, il est fascinant à lire, pour peu que l’on soit familier avec la langue de Shakespeare et que l’on s’accommode des accents grinçants de l’auteur. Je recommande fortement la lecture de ce texte à tout étudiant de la gouvernance; c’est un must pour comprendre le champ d’étude ! C’est un document que j’ai l’intention de traduire au cours des prochains mois.
Cover via Amazon
Voici les points saillants de l’essai de Branson (en anglais à ce stade-ci) :
In 1932, Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means documented the widespread dispersion of corporate shareholders, and the atomization of corporate shareholdings. They noted that in the then modern corporation “ownership has become depersonalized.” The result was that a new form of property had come into being. The person who owned the property no longer controlled it, as the farmer who owned the horse had to feed it, teach it pull the plow, and bury it when it died. “In the corporate system, the ‘owner’ of industrial wealth is left with a mere symbol of ownership while the power, the responsibility and the substance which have been an integral part of ownership in the past are being transferred to a separate group in whose hands lies control.” This was the fabled “separation of ownership from control.”
In one of the best known of his books (1956), American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power, Galbraith rhetorically posed a number of solutions to the problem of unchecked corporate power, including the separation of ownership from control, although he generally did not use the Berle & Means terminology. He did not propose nationalization, as the British had done. Instead, he theorized that, indeed, corporations had grown too large, their shareholders no longer controlled them, competitive market forces no longer constrained them, and the potential for abuse was great. That potential would be checked however by the growth of countervailing power inherent in the growth of labor unions, consumer groups and government agencies. Galbraith pointed to the growth and influence of consumer cooperatives which enjoyed great growth in Scandinavia, at least in the post-War years. Essentially, those newly empowered groups would supply the controls historically owners had provided.
The Corporate Social Responsibility Movement of the Early 70s called for government intervention, as the nationalization movement had, but on discrete fronts rather than on a plenary basis. One scholar urged replacement of the one share one vote standard prevalent in U.S. corporate law with a graduated scale so that with acquisition of addition shares owners, particularly institutional owners who were perceived to be excessively mercenary would receive less and less voting power. A “power to the people” mandate would augment the power of individual owners, who generally held fewer shares but were thought to be more socially conscious. Calls for required installation of public interest directors on publicly held corporations’ boards sometimes included sub-recommendations that legislation also require that the publicly minded be equipped with offices and staffs, at corporate expense. Others proposed requirements for social auditing and for mandatory disclosure of social audit results.
Toward the second half of the 1970s, The Corporate Accountability Research Group, created and promoted by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, gathered evidence, marshaled arguments, and advocated the other, more drastic reform of the 1970s, federal chartering of large corporations. In certain of its incarnations, chartering advocates expanded the proposal’s reach, from the 500 largest enterprises to the 2000 largest U.S. corporations by revenue, to any corporation which did a significant amount of business with the federal government, and to certain categories of companies whose businesses were thought to be infected with the public interest. Whatever the universe of such corporations, these companies would have to re-register with a new federal entity, the Federal Chartering Agency. In addition, these corporations would no longer have perpetual existence as they had under state law. Instead the new federal statute corporations would have only limited life charters, good for, say, 20 or 25 years limited.
A Seismic Shift: the Swift Rise of Law and Economics Jurisprudence of the 1980s . Perhaps only once in a lifetime will one see as pronounced a jurisprudential shift as that from the corporate social responsibility and federal chartering movements to the minimalist, non-invasive take of economics on corporate law and corporate governance. Law and economics pointed to a minimalist corporate jurisprudence the core theory of which was that market forces regulated corporate and managerial behavior much better than regulation, laws, or lawsuits ever could.
An Antidote: The Good Governance Movement. The American Law Institute (ALI) Corporate Governance Project of 1994 constituted an implicit rejection of, and an antidote to, the law and economics movement. Succinctly, the ALI evinced a strong belief that, yes, corporate law does have a role to play. That belief, sometimes characterized as the constitutionalist approach, in contrast to the contractarian approach, underline and buttresses the entire ALI Project. The ALI crafted recommended rules for corporate objectives; structure, including board composition and committee structure; duty of “fair dealing” (duty of loyalty); duty of care and the business judgment rule; roles of directors and shareholders in control transactions and tender offers; and shareholders’remedies, including the derivative action and appraisal remedies.
The Early 1990s: The Emphasis on Institutional Investor Activism. Traditionally, though, institutional investors followed the “Wall Street Rule,” meaning that if they developed an aversion to a portfolio company’s performance or governance, they simply sold the stock rather than becoming embroiled in a corporate governance issue. Institutions voted with their feet. That is, they did so until portfolio positions had become so large that if an institutional investor liquidated even a sizeable portion of the portfolio’s stake in a company, the institution’s sales alone would push down the stock’s price. Thus, in the modern era, institutional investors are faced with more of a buy and hold strategy than they otherwise might prefer. So was born an opening to push for yet another proposed reform which would fill the vacuum created by the separation of ownership from control, namely, institutional activism, or “agents watching agents.” The case for institutional oversight was that because “product, capital, labor, and corporate control constraints on managerial discretion are imperfect, corporate managers need to be watched by someone, and the institutions are the only institutions available.”
The Shift to an Emphasis on “Global” Convergence in Corporate Governance. In the second half of the 90s decade, the governance prognosticators did an abrupt about face, abandoning talk about the prospect of institutional shareholder activism in favor of pontification on the prospect of global convergence. The thesis went something like this. Through the process of globalization the world had become a much smaller place. Through use of media such as email and the Internet, governance advocates in Singapore now knew, or knew how to find out, what was happening on the corporate governance front in the United Kingdom and the United States. According to U.S. academics, the global model of good governance would replicate the U.S. model of corporate governance, of course…
Shift of the Emphasis to the Gatekeepers in 2001. Whatever the U.S. system was, it had a great many defects and it did not do the job for which it had been devised. In addition, of course, no sign existed that the convergence predicted had taken place. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) heads off in varying directions but a careful reader can discern that one of the legislation’s dominant themes is strengthening gatekeepers as a means of enhancing watchfulness over corporations. Thus, for example, SOX requires public corporations to have audit committees composed of independent directors, one or more of whom must be financial experts. Section 307 imposes whistleblowing duties upon attorneys who uncover wrongdoing. To enhance their independence, SOX requires that accountings firms which audit public companies no longer may provide a long list of lucrative consulting services for audit clients.
Emphasis on Independent Directors and Independent Board Committees. The movement for independent directors gathered steam with the 2002 SOX legislation, which required that SEC reporting companies, that is, most publicly held corporations, have an audit committee comprised exclusively of independent directors. The New York Stock Exchange followed by amendments to its Listing Manual that listed public companies have a majority of directors who are independent, making the 1994 ALI recommendation of good practice into a hard and fast requirement. In 2010, the Dodd-Frank Act jumped on the independent director bandwagon with its requirement that exchanges refuse to list the shares of corporations who disclose they do not have a compensation committee comprised of independent directors. Observers who have written about the issue assume that the Dodd-Frank disclosure requirement is a de facto requirement that corporations have compensation committees, albeit a backhanded sort of requirement.
L’extrait que je vous présente vous donnera une bonne idée de la teneur des propos de Branson. Vous pouvez télécharger le document de 25 pages.
Vos commentaires sont grandement appréciés. Bonne lecture.
This article is a retrospective of corporate governance reforms various academics have authored over the last 60 years or so, by the author of the first U.S. legal treatise on the subject of corporate governance (Douglas M. Branson, Corporate Governance (1993)). The first finding is as to periodicity: even casual inspection reveals that the reformer group which controls the « reform » agenda has authored a new and different reform proposal every five years, with clock-like regularity. The second finding flows from the first, namely, that not one of these proposals has made so much as a dent in the problems that are perceived to exist. The third inquiry is to ask why this is so? Possible answers include the top down nature of scholarship and reform proposals in corporate governance; the closed nature of the group controlling the agenda, confined as it is to 8-10 academics at elite institutions; the lack of any attempt rethink or redefine the challenges which governance may or may not face; and the continued adhesion to the problem as the separation of ownership from control as Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means perceived it more than 80 years ago.
Aujourd’hui, j’ai choisi de partager avec les lecteurs un article de Holly J. Gregory, associé de Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, paru sur le blogue de Harvard Law School Forum (HLSF) on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation. Ce billet présente un solide argumentaire en faveur de la préservation d’un juste équilibre entre les principaux acteurs de la gouvernance : les actionnaires, les administrateurs, les managers, les conseillers et les autorités règlementaires.
Il est clair que le conseil d’administration, élu par les actionnaires, a toujours la responsabilité de l’orientation, de la surveillance et du suivi de l’organisation. Mais l’environnement de la gouvernance a changé et les actionnaires peuvent maintenant se référer aux avis exprimés par les firmes spécialisées de conseils en procuration pour mieux faire entendre leurs voix.
L’auteur tente de clarifier les rôles de tous les acteurs en insistant sur les équilibres fragiles à préserver dans la gouvernance des sociétés. Que pensez-vous de la montée de l’influence des actionnaires activistes ?
In our annual missive last year, we wrote about the need to restore trust in our system of corporate governance generally and in relations between boards of directors and shareholders specifically. We continue to be troubled by the tensions that have developed over roles and responsibilities in the corporate governance framework for public companies. The board’s fundamental mandate under state law – to “manage and direct” the operations of the company – is under pressure, facilitated by federal regulation that gives shareholders advisory votes on subjects where they do not have decision rights either under corporate law or charter. Some tensions between boards and shareholders are inherent in our governance system and are healthy. While we are concerned about further escalation, we do not view the current relationship between boards and shareholders as akin to a battle, let alone a revolution, as some media rhetoric about a “shareholder spring” might suggest. However, we do believe that boards and shareholders should work to smooth away excesses on both sides to ensure a framework in which decisions can be made in the best interests of the company and its varied body of shareholders.
English: The former Gales Brewery Betrayed by shareholders who wanted the cash rather than a successful business. Sold to Fullers 2005, closed by Fullers 2006 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The board is charged with managing and directing the affairs of the corporation. State law does not dictate with specificity how the board should carry out this mandate, but rather imposes fiduciary duties on individual directors. This allows a degree of board self-determination within the flexible fiduciary framework of prudence, good faith and loyalty. However, while board and director responsibilities have not changed in any fundamental way, from a compliance, disclosure and risk management perspective, more is expected from the boards of public companies than ever before. Boards need to meet the expanding expectations of regulators, shareholders, and the public while maintaining focus on key board responsibilities. The corporate form enables shareholders to share in the benefits of corporate activity while limiting their potential liability to their investment. Their decision rights may be limited, but their voice and their influence is not. Of course, with power comes responsibility. If shareholders do not have the resources to become informed about a particular company and the issues that it faces, or if there are no performance issues or other red flags that would warrant special attention, it makes sense for shareholders to generally defer to the board’s recommendations made in the fiduciary decision-making framework the law promotes. This essential construct of corporate law should be respected as it has served all of us well. Shareholder powers should be exercised to strengthen this construct, not create a playground for special interests.
Preserving the delicate balance between board and shareholder responsibilities is vital to enable companies to maintain focus and efficiently create sustainable long-term value for shareholders, particularly in times of difficult economic conditions.
Voici le compte rendu d’une conférence donnée par Luis A. Aguilar, commissaire de la SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) qui décrit le rôle des investisseurs institutionnels et leur influence sur le contrôle des grandes sociétés publiques.
L’article est intéressant parce qu’il énonce deux problématiques cruciales eu regard à la règlementation visant les investisseurs institutionnels. (1) l’importance de la divulgation d’informations fiables aux investisseurs, (2) le besoin des investisseurs d’être entendus sur les considérations de gouvernance, notamment sur la rémunération de la haute direction.
L’article reflète la réalité américaine mais je crois que les avis de M. Aguilar sont aussi valables pour les grandes corporations canadiennes. Voici un extrait du compte rendu qui brosse un tableau éloquent des changements majeurs du rôle et de l’influence des investisseurs institutionnels survenus au cours des 60 dernières années : de 7 % de la capitalisation boursière en 1950 à 67 % en 2010 !
The topic of your conference recognizes the important role played by institutional investors and the great influence they exert in our capital markets. The role and influence of institutional investors has grown over time. For example, the proportion of U.S. public equities managed by institutions has risen steadily over the past six decades, from about 7 or 8% of market capitalization in 1950, to about 67 % in 2010. The shift has come as more American families participate in the capital markets through pooled-investment vehicles, such as mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs).
Institutional investor ownership is an even more significant factor in the largest corporations: In 2009, institutional investors owned in the aggregate 73% of the outstanding equity in the 1,000 largest U.S. corporations.
The New York Stock Exchange, the world’s largest stock exchange by market capitalization (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The growth in the proportion of assets managed by institutional investors has been accompanied by a dramatic growth in the market capitalization of U.S. listed companies. For example, in 1950, the combined market value of all stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was about $94 billion. By 2012, however, the domestic market capitalization of the NYSE was more than $14 trillion, an increase of nearly1,500%. This growth is even more impressive if you add the $4.5 trillion in market capitalization on the NASDAQ market, which did not exist until 1971. The bottom line is, that as a whole, institutional investors own a larger share of a larger market.Of course, institutional investors are not all the same. They come in many different forms and with many different characteristics. Among other things, institutional investors have different organizational and governance structures, and are subject to different regulatory requirements. The universe of institutional investors includes mutual funds and ETFs regulated by the SEC, as well as pension funds, insurance companies, and a wide variety of hedge funds and managed accounts, many of which are unregulated.
And, of course, institutional investors don’t all buy or sell the same asset classes at the same time. To the contrary, they have a wide variety of distinct goals, strategies, and timeframes for their investments. As a result, their interaction with, and impact on, the market occurs in many different ways.
The growth in assets managed by institutions has also affected, and been affected by, the significant changes in market structure and trading technologies over the past few decades, including the development of the national market system, the proliferation of trading venues – including both dark pools and electronic trading platforms – and the advent of algorithmic and high-speed trading. These changes – largely driven by the trading of institutional investors – have resulted in huge increases in trading volumes. For example, in 1990, the average daily volume on the NYSE was 162 million shares. Today, just 23 years later, that average daily volume is approximately 2.6 billion shares – an increase of about 1,600%.
Simply stated, institutional investors are dominant market players, but it is difficult to fit them into any particular category. This poses a challenge for regulators, who must take into account all the many different ways institutional investors operate, and interact, with the capital markets.
It is clear, however, that professionally-managed institutions can help ensure that our capital markets function as engines for economic growth. Institutional investors are known to improve price discovery, increase allocative efficiency, and promote management accountability. They aggregate the capital that businesses need to grow, and provide trading markets with liquidity – the lifeblood of our capital markets.
In doing all this, institutional investors – like all investors – depend on the assurance of a level playing field, access to complete and reliable information, and the ability to exercise their rights as shareowners. That is why fair and intelligent regulation is necessary for the proper functioning of our capital markets.
Autres articles qui pourraient aussi vous intéresser :
Il y a une multitude de C.A. qui, à l’origine, ont été structurés sur la base de la plus grande représentation possible de membres de leurs organisations. Évidemment, dans ces cas, aucun administrateur n’est réellement indépendant et plusieurs sont mal placés pour participer à des décisions qui peuvent avoir une incidence sur les intérêts de leur groupe de référence. Dans ces cas, les administrateurs sont souvent en conflit d’intérêt car ils croient représenter un groupe particulier.
En réalité, plusieurs ne comprennent pas, ou ne veulent pas comprendre, qu’ils doivent agir en fonction des « meilleurs intérêts de l’entité » sur laquelle il siège. On leur dit qu’ils doivent être indépendants d’esprit… Plusieurs administrateurs ne respectent pas la confidentialité des informations présentées à l’assemblée. Certains s’empressent de tout rapporter aux organisations qu’ils représentent (sic).
Liverpool Chamber of Commerce (Photo credit: americaspower)
Voici un cas qui intéressera sûrement tous les membres de conseils d’administration d’associations bénévoles, surtout celles qui sont constituées de représentants de différents secteurs industriels. Même si le cas origine du blogue australien de Julie Garland McLellan, celui-ci s’applique très bien à la situation de plusieurs entreprises à vocation associative. Le cas et son analyse sont en anglais.
Qu’en pensez-vous ? Qu’auriez-vous fait à la place d’Ursula ? Quelle analyse d’expert vous semble la plus appropriée dans notre contexte ?
« This month our real life case study focuses on the complex conflicts of interest affecting association boards where the directors are representatives of industry participants ».
La gestion des risques est une activité-clé qui doit être orchestrée par la direction de l’entreprise. Mais quel doit être le rôle du conseil d’administration en matière de surveillance de l’exécution de cette tâche essentielle ? Quel est effectivement l’étendu du rôle du conseil dans les grandes sociétés publiques américaines. C’est ce que le document du Conference Board, présenté ici, décrit avec moult détails et d’une manière exceptionnellement bien illustrée. Je vous invite donc à prendre connaissance de ce texte qui traite des aspects suivants :
Responsabilité pour l’établissement des stratégies
Fréquence des révisions des stratégies
Réunion spéciale de planification stratégique
Adoption d’une approche standardisée telle qu’ERM (Enterprise Risk Management)
Responsabilité pour la surveillance des risques
Fréquence des comptes rendus de la direction au C.A. en matière de risque
Le responsable en chef de la gestion des risques (CRO)
Le comité des risques de l’entreprise
Any business is exposed to risks that can threaten its ability to execute its strategy. For this reason, strategy and risk oversight are inherently connected. Today, more than ever, the board of directors is expected to thoroughly assess key business risks and ensure that the enterprise is equipped to mitigate them. This Directors Notes discusses the current corporate practices on risk oversight by directors of U.S. public companies. Findings detail where the board assigns these responsibilities, whether it avails itself of dedicated reporting lines from senior management on risk issues, and the degree to which it adopts a standardized framework on enterprise risk management (ERM).
Given the correlation between risk and strategy, data on the frequency and forms of strategic reviews is also presented. The findings are from the most recent edition of the Board Practices Survey, which The Conference Board conducts annually in collaboration with NASDAQ OMX and NYSE Euronext (see “The Board Practices Survey” on p. 5). The Dodd-Frank Act mandates that financial institutions strengthen their risk oversight by establishing a dedicated risk committee of the board of directors.
In addition, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules require all public companies to disclose the extent of their board’s role in overseeing the organization’s risk exposure, including how the board administers its risk oversight function and how the leadership structure accommodates such a role.
Finally, in October 2009, the SEC reversed a policy under which shareholder proposals relating to the evaluation of risk could be excluded from a company’s proxy materials as related to the company’s ordinary day-to-day business activities. Collectively, these developments are a nod in the direction of addressing the risk oversight failures that played so prominently in the 2008 financial crisis. Most important, they are expected to increase scrutiny of risk management programs and their endorsement and close supervision by senior leaders of corporations.
Voici un document phare sur l’étude des rémunérations jugées excessives dans les grandes sociétés publiques. Cette recherche, dirigée par Charles M. Elson et Craig K. Ferrere de l’Université du Delaware*, a été acceptée pour publication dans le Journal of Corporation Law.
Les auteurs présentent plusieurs arguments qui remettent en cause l’étalonnage compétitif (competitive benchmarking), une méthode d’établissement de la rémunération jugée inflationniste. Les auteurs font la démonstration que cette façon de faire n’est pas justifiée et que ses effets ont des répercussions pernicieuses sur toute la structure de rémunération. En fait, l’hypothèse selon laquelle il faut rémunérer « grassement » les hauts dirigeants afin de les retenir ne tient pas la route.
L’article recommande aux comités de rémunération de s’éloigner des méthodes traditionnelles de « benchmarking » et de développer des standards internes de rémunération basés sur les spécificités de l’entreprise, notamment son environnement compétitif unique. Les comités de rémunération aurait avantage à prendre connaissance de cette étude. Vous trouverez, ci-dessous, un résumé de l’article.
In setting the pay of their CEOs, boards invariably reference the pay of the executives at other enterprises in similar industries and of similar size and complexity. In what is described as « competitive benchmarking », compensation levels are generally targeted to either the 50th, 75th, or 90th percentile. This process is alleged to provide an effective gauge of « market wages » which are necessary for executive retention. As we will describe, this conception of such a market was created purely by happenstance and based upon flawed assumptions, particularly the easy transferability of executive talent. Because of its uniform application across companies, the effects of structural flaws in its design significantly affect the level of executive compensation.
President Barack Obama delivering remarks on new executive compensation restrictions. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It has been observed in both the academic and professional communities that the practice of targeting the pay of executives to median or higher levels of the competitive benchmark will naturally create an upward bias and movement in total compensation amounts. Whether this escalation has been dramatic or merely incremental, the compounded effect has been to create a significant disparity between the pay of CEOs and what is appropriate to the companies they run. This is not surprising. By basing pay on primarily external comparisons, a separate regime which was untethered from the actual wage structures of the rest of the organization was established. Over time, these disconnected systems were bound to diverge.
The pay of a chief executive officer, however, has a profound effect on the incentive structure throughout the corporate hierarchy. Rising pay thus has costs far greater than the amount actually transferred to the CEOs themselves. To mitigate this, boards must set pay in a manner in which is more consistent with the internal corporate wage structures. An important step in that direction is to diminish the focus on external benchmarking.
We argue that: (I) theories of optimal market-based contracting are misguided in that they are predicated upon the chimerical notion of vigorous and competitive markets for transferable executive talent; (II) that even boards comprised of only the most faithful fiduciaries of shareholder interests will fail to reach an agreeable resolution to the compensation conundrum because of the unfounded reliance on the structurally malignant and unnecessary process of peer benchmarking; and, (III) that the solution lies in avoiding the mechanistic and arbitrary application of peer group data in arriving at executive compensation levels. Instead, independent and shareholder-conscious compensation committees must develop internally created standards of pay based on the individual nature of the organization concerned, its particular competitive environment and its internal dynamics.
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*Cette recherche a été financée par (1) The Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, (2) The Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute et (3) The Social Science Research Network.
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Gouvernance | Jacques Grisé 