Compte rendu hebdomadaire de la Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance | 18 janvier 2018

Voici le compte rendu hebdomadaire du forum de la Harvard Law School sur la gouvernance corporative au 18 janvier 2018.

Cette semaine, j’ai relevé les dix principaux billets.

Bonne lecture !

Résultats de recherche d'images pour « Harvard Law School forum on corporate governance »

Les administrateurs de sociétés qui cumulent plusieurs postes deviennent-ils trop accaparés ?

Qu’est-ce qu’un administrateur très occupé en termes d’appartenance à plusieurs CA ? Quand un administrateur est-il trop occupé ?

À ce sujet, les études montrent que les avis des actionnaires sont partagés entre (1) un administrateur possédant une solide expérience sur la base de l’appartenance à plusieurs CA et (2) un administrateur trop accaparé par le fardeau qu’exige la contribution à plusieurs conseils.

Les administrateurs de sociétés publiques consacrent, en moyenne, 248 heures par année à leur travail, comparativement à 191 heures en 2005. Il s’agit d’une augmentation de 30 %. C’est 5 heures par semaine !

L’article de Wayne R. Guay, professeur de comptabilité à l’Université Wharton, explore la problématique sous tous ses angles.

« These results suggest that effective advising, as compared to effective monitoring, may rely more on director ability, whereby the latter may suffer more from director time constraints ».

Bonne lecture !

Busy Directors and Shareholder Satisfaction

The job of a corporate director has become increasingly time consuming. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the director of a public firm spends an average of 248 hours a year on each board, up from 191 hours in 2005. In light of this growing time demand, corporate directors face increasing investor scrutiny regarding the number of boards on which a given director sits. Prior research has examined the firm-level performance implications of corporate boards that have a large proportion of “busy” directors. However, there are several difficulties in these studies. In particular, firm-level analysis masks important heterogeneity in the time constraints and the expertise benefits of busy directors. For example, sitting on three boards might be excessive for a director with a full-time job, but it might be reasonable, or even optimal, for an individual who is retired. Also, certain firms (e.g., less experienced firms) may benefit more from the expertise and advising of a busy director. Furthermore, there may be omitted firm-level characteristics that are driving both director busyness and firm performance, which suggests that an observed positive (negative) association between director busyness and good (poor) firm performance does not necessarily imply that busy directors are beneficial (detrimental) to shareholders.

In our paper, Busy Directors and Shareholder Satisfaction, we move away from firm-level tests of the performance of busy boards, and instead examine the relations between individual busy directors, their heterogeneous characteristics, and shareholder satisfaction. To measure shareholder satisfaction, we use shareholder voting outcomes in annual director elections. Our approach has several distinctive features that allow us to overcome the difficulties of prior studies. First, shareholder voting is measured at the director-level which allows us to incorporate individual director characteristics into our analysis. Second, we use “within-firm-year” and “within-director-year” research designs. The within-firm-year design uses variation in shareholder voting for directors at a given firm within a given year. This allows us to fully account for the confounding effects of firm characteristics that may be present in prior analyses. The within-director-year design uses variation in firm characteristics among the boards on which a director sits in a given year. This approach allows us to identify differences in shareholder satisfaction across different types of firms for the same director in a given year, and thus can help isolate the heterogeneity in the effect of busyness as a function of firm characteristics.

On average, shareholders perceive that the costs of busy directors exceed their benefits. The percentage of “For” votes that a busy director receives is, on average, about one percentage point lower than that of a non-busy director. This is 28% of the standard deviation of within-board shareholder voting across firms. Importantly, this drop in shareholder satisfaction for busy directors holds when controlling for various observable director characteristics, such as age, tenure, gender, retirement status and committee membership, and all observable and unobservable firm characteristics through the within-firm-year design. This distinguishes our finding from firm-level analysis of busy boards which do not fully control for individual director characteristics and unobservable firm characteristics. The result also holds when controlling for the influence of proxy advisory firm recommendations, indicating that shareholders appear to penalize busyness over and beyond ISS policy recommendations. Moreover, the effect of director busyness on shareholder satisfaction is stronger in the second half of our sample period, which is consistent with common perceptions that time demands for directors have increased in recent years.

We next examine the heterogeneity among individual busy directors and whether “busyness” is more or less acceptable to shareholders for certain types of directors. Clearly, one of the primary concerns with a busy director is the time constraints that multiple directorships can impose on the individual’s ability to diligently monitor and advise management. Across an array of proxies for director time constraints, we find strong evidence that busy directors with greater (lesser) external time demands receive lower (higher) shareholder satisfaction. Specifically, we find that busy directors who are retired from full-time employment receive greater shareholder satisfaction, while busy directors who are executives at another firm receive lower satisfaction. Busy directors also receive lower shareholder satisfaction when a greater proportion of their boards have the same fiscal-year-end (FYE) month. Boards with the same FYE month are likely to be busy at similar times during the year, which increases the time constraints of directors serving on those boards. Finally, directors receive lower satisfaction when they serve on a greater number of external board committees (e.g., audit, compensation, nominating).

Our final set of tests, using the within-director-year design, examines how the expertise benefit of busy directors varies as a function of a firm’s advising and monitoring needs. Adams et al. (2010) suggest that busy directors are of a “higher quality” than non-busy directors, which presumably comes from some combination of their greater skill, experience or wider network of contacts. These traits can improve the ability of a director to provide useful advice and/or monitor executive behavior (Coles et al., 2012). At the same time, busy directors may be “spread too thin” to effectively provide executives with detailed guidance or to engage in the due diligence necessary to effectively monitor management (Fich and Shivdasani, 2006). Consequently, the advising and monitoring effectiveness of busy directors is an empirical question, which may vary across firms depending on the demands for these roles from directors.

Using the within-director-year design, we are able to examine whether certain firms (e.g., less experienced firms) may benefit more from the expertise and advising of the same busy director. This design allows us to isolate the differences in shareholder satisfaction for busy directors that arise from firm advising and monitoring needs, rather than director characteristics. We find that shareholders are more supportive of busy directors at younger firms and firms with greater growth opportunities (firms predicted to demand more advising), and are less supportive at firms where CEOs hold less equity (firms predicted to demand more monitoring). These results suggest that effective advising, as compared to effective monitoring, may rely more on director ability, whereby the latter may suffer more from director time constraints.

Collectively, our results provide insight on the longstanding debate about busy directors’ performance and the tradeoffs between their potentially higher ability and tighter time constraints. Our results also suggest that shareholder voting is more nuanced than documented in prior studies (e.g., Cai et al., 2009). In particular, we find that shareholders are quite sophisticated with their director voting in that they appear to respond to director-specific variation in time constraints (e.g., number of additional boards, employment characteristics, overlapping fiscal-year ends for board responsibilities, committee responsibilities). Shareholders also seem to recognize that busy directors may be more beneficial when the firm has relatively high advising needs.

The complete paper is available for download here

Compte rendu hebdomadaire de la Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance | 12 janvier 2018

Voici le compte rendu hebdomadaire du forum de la Harvard Law School sur la gouvernance corporative au 12 janvier 2018.

Cette semaine, j’ai relevé les dix principaux billets.

Bonne lecture !

Résultats de recherche d'images pour « Harvard Law School forum on corporate governance »

Compte rendu hebdomadaire de la Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance | 4 janvier 2018

Voici le compte rendu hebdomadaire du forum de la Harvard Law School sur la gouvernance corporative au 4 janvier 2018.

Cette semaine, j’ai relevé les dix principaux billets.

Bonne lecture !

Résultats de recherche d'images pour « Harvard Law School forum on corporate governance »

Enquête de Deloitte sur la diversité des conseils d’administration

Il existe une solide unanimité sur l’importance d’accroître la diversité dans les conseils d’administration.

Mike Fucci, président du conseil de Deloitte, nous présente une excellente infographie* sur le sujet.

Voici un sommaire des thèmes traités dans son article, paru dans Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance.

(1) Perception de la diversité dans les conseils d’administration

Les CA sont d’accord avec la nécessité d’une grande diversité

Les leaders perçoivent clairement les bienfaits de la diversité

Cependant, il y a peu d’administrateurs qui voient le manque de diversité comme un problème majeur !

(2) Recrutement et pratiques d’évaluation

Les CA s’en remettent trop souvent aux critères traditionnels de sélection des administrateurs (grande expérience de management ou de PDG)

Environ la moitié des organisations qui ont des plans de relève n’ont pas de processus de recrutement comportant des habiletés liées à la diversité

Presque toutes les organisations sont conscientes que les politiques concernant la limitation du nombre de mandats et de l’âge sont nécessaires pour assurer le renouvellement du CA

Cependant, les pratiques utilisées semblent limiter la diversité

(3) Nouveau modèle de gouvernance — la mixtocratie

Atteindre un équilibre entre l’expérience souhaitée et la diversité requise

Nécessité de revoir la notion de risque

Faire la promotion du modèle de diversité

Revoir systématiquement la composition du conseil

Redynamiser la planification de la relève

Avoir des objectifs clairs de diversité

L’infographie présentée parle d’elle-même. Bonne lecture !

2017 Board Diversity Survey

Part 1. Perceptions of board diversity

The findings in this section show that the survey found nearly universal agreement on the need for diverse skill sets and perspectives on the board, and on the potential benefits of diversity.

Boards agree on the need for diversity

Note, however, that this finding does not reveal where diversity of skill sets and perspectives are needed. Thus, the skills and perspectives could be those of, say, financial or operating or information
technology executives. Such backgrounds would represent diversity of skills and perspectives, but not the demographic diversity that the term “diversity” usually implies.

Demographic diversity remains an essential goal in that gender and racial differences are key determinates of a person’s experiences, attitudes, frame of reference, and point of view.

As the next finding reveals, however, respondents do not see demographic diversity as enough.

Board members see diversity as going beyond basic demographics

Nine in ten respondents agree that gender and racial diversity alone does not produce the diversity required for an organization to be innovative or disruptive. This may be surprising, given that gender and racial differences are generally seen as contributing to diverse perspectives. Yet those contributions may be tempered if recruiting and selection methods skew toward candidates with the backgrounds and experiences of white males with executive experience.

More to the point, it would be unfortunate if a focus on diversity of skills and perspectives were to undermine or cloud the focus on gender and racial diversity. In fact, typical definitions of board diversity include a demographic component. Deloitte’s 2016 Board Practices Report found that 53 percent of large-cap and 45 percent of mid-cap organizations disclose gender data on their board’s diversity; the respective numbers for racial diversity are, far lower, however: 18 percent and 9 percent. [1]

So, the deeper questions may be these: How does the board go about defining diversity? Does its definition include gender and racial factors? Does it also include factors such as skills, experiences, and perspectives? Will the board’s practices enable it to achieve diversity along these various lines?

Before turning to practices, we consider the potential benefits of diversity.

Leaders overwhelmingly perceive benefits in diversity

Taken at face value, these answers indicate that boards believe in diversity, however they go about defining it, for business reasons and not just for its own sake or reasons of social responsibility.

…Yet relatively few see a lack of diversity as a top problem

The foregoing findings show that leaders believe that boards need greater diversity of skills and perspectives, that demographic diversity alone may not produce that diversity, and that diversity is seen as beneficial in managing innovation, disruption, and business performance. Yet, somewhat surprisingly, few respondents cited a lack of diversity as a top problem.

So, while 95 percent of respondents agree that their board needs to seek out more candidates with diverse skills and perspectives, far smaller percentages cite lack of diversity as among the top problems they face in candidate recruitment or selection.

Does this reflect contentment with current board composition and acceptance of the status quo?

Perhaps, or perhaps not.

However, we can say that many board recruitment and selection practices remain very traditional.

Part 2. Recruitment and evaluation practices

Board recruitment practices have arguably not kept pace with the desire and need for greater board diversity.

Boards still rely on traditional candidate criteria

In addition, 81 percent of respondents would expect multiple board members to see a candidate without executive experience as unqualified to serve on the board.

The low percentage of women candidates (16 percent) is striking, as is that of racial minorities (19 percent). However, that may be a logical outcome of a process favoring selecting candidates with board experience—who historically have tended to be white and male.

So, in the recruitment process, board members are often seeking people who tend to be like themselves—and like management. Such a process may help to reinforce a lack of diversity in perspectives and experiences, as well as (in most companies) in gender and race.

Relying on resumes, which reflect organizational and educational experience, helps to reinforce traditional patterns of board composition.

About half of organizations have processes focused on diverse skills and disruptive views

Given all their other responsibilities, many boards understandably rely on existing recruitment tools and processes. They use resumes, their networks, and executive recruiters—all of which tend to generate results very similar to past results.

However, our current disruptive environment likely calls for more creative approaches to reaching diverse candidates. Some organizations have taken steps to address these needs.

Our survey did not assess the nature or extent of the processes for recruiting candidates with diverse skills or perspectives, indicating an area for further investigation.

Policies affecting board refreshment

Policies, as well as processes, can affect board composition. Low turnover on boards can not only hinder movement toward greater diversity but also lead to myopic views of operations or impaired ability to oversee evolving strategies and risks.

While board members expressed agreement with term and age limits, the latter are far more common. Our separate 2016 Board Practices Report found that 81 percent of large-cap and 74 percent of mid-cap companies have age limits, but only 5 percent and 6 percent, respectively, have term limits. [2] This evidences a large gap between agreement with term limits as an idea and term limits as a practice.

Current practices tend to limit diversity

Deloitte’s 2016 Board Practices Report also found that 84 percent of large-cap and 90 percent of mid-cap organizations most often rely on current directors’ recommendations of candidates. [3] That same study found that 68 percent and 79 percent, respectively, use a recruiting firm when needed, and that 62 percent and 79 percent use a board skills matrix or similar tool.

Relying on current directors’ recommendations will generally produce candidates much like those directors. Recruiting firms can be valuable, but tend to adopt the client’s view of diversity. Tools such as board competency matrices generally do not account for an organization’s strategy, nor do they provide a very nuanced view of individual board members’ experiences and capabilities. In other words, bringing people with diverse skills, perspectives, and experiences to the board—as well as women and racial and ethnic minorities—requires more robust processes than those currently used by most boards.

Part 3. A path forward—The Mixtocracy Model

The term meritocracy describes organizational advancement based upon merit—talents and accomplishments—and aims to combat the nepotism and cronyism that traditionally permeated many businesses. However, too often meritocracy results in mirrortocracy in which all directors bring similar perspectives and approaches to governance, risk management, and other board responsibilities.

A board differs from a position, such as chief executive officer or chief financial officer, in that it is a collection of individuals. A board is a team and, like any other team, it requires people who can fulfill specific roles, contribute different skills and views, and work together to achieve certain goals.

Thus, a board can include nontraditional members who will be balanced out by more traditional ones. Many existing recruiting methods do too little to achieve true diversity. The prevalence of those criteria and methods can repeatedly send boards back to the same talent pool, even in the case of women and minority candidates. For example, Deloitte’s 2016 Board Diversity Census shows that female and black directors are far more likely than white male directors to hold multiple Fortune 500 board seats. [4]

Therefore, organizations should consider institutionalizing a succession planning and recruitment process that more closely aligns to their ideal board composition and diversity goals. Here are three ways to potentially do that:

Look beyond “the tried and true.” Even when boards account for gender and race, current practices may tend to source candidates with similar views. Succession plans should create seats for those who are truly different, for example someone with no board experience but a strong cybersecurity background or someone who more closely mirrors the customer base.

Take a truly analytical approach. Developing the optimal mix on the board calls for considering risks, opportunities, and markets, as well as customers, employees, and other stakeholders. A data-driven analytics tool that assesses management’s strategies, the board’s needs, and desired director attributes can help define the optimal mix in light of those factors.

Use more sophisticated criteria. Look beyond resumes and check-the-box approaches to recruiting women, minorities, and those with the right title. Surface-level diversity will not necessarily generate varying perspectives and innovative responses to disruption. Deep inquiry into a candidate’s outlook, experience, and fit can take the board beyond standard criteria, while prompting the board to more fully consider women and minority candidates—that is, to not see them mainly as women and minority candidates.

To construct and maintain a board that can meet evolving governance, advisory, and risk oversight needs, leaders should also consider the following steps.

Rethink risk

Digitalization continues to disrupt the business landscape. The ability to not only respond to disruption, but to proactively disrupt, has commonly become a must. Yet boards have historically focused on loss prevention rather than value creation. Every board should ask itself who best can help in ascertaining that management is taking the right risks to innovate and win in the marketplace. The more diversity of thought, perspectives, experiences, and skills a board collectively possesses, the better it can oversee moves into riskier territory in an informed and useful way—and to assist management in making bold decisions that are likely to pay off.

Elevate diversity

Current definitions of board diversity tend to focus on at-birth traits, such as gender and race. While such diversity is essential, it may promote a check-the-box approach to gender and racial diversity. Boards that include those traits and also enrich them by considering differences gained through employment paths, industry experiences, educational, artistic, and cultural endeavors, international living, and government, military, and other service will more likely achieve a true mix of perspectives
and capabilities.

They may also develop a more holistic vision of gender and racial diversity. After all, woman and minority board members do not want to be “women and minority board members”—they want to be board members. In other words, this approach should aim to generate a fuller view of candidates and board members, as well as more diversity of skills and perspectives and gender and race.

Retool board composition

Current tools for achieving an optimal mix of directors can generally be classified as simplistic, generic, and outdated. They often help in organizing information, but provide little to no support in identifying strategic needs and aligning a board’s skills, perspectives, and experiences with those needs.

Successful board composition typically demands analysis of data on organizational strategies, customer demographics, industry disruption, and market trends to identify gaps and opportunities. A board should consider not only individual member’s profiles but also assess the board as one working body to ascertain that complementary characteristics and capabilities are in place or can be put in place.

A tool to support this analysis should be the initial input into the succession planning and recruitment process. It should also be used in ongoing assessments to help ensure that the board equals a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Revitalize succession planning

The process of filling an open board position may be seen as similar to that for recruiting C-suite candidates. But that would ignore the fact that the board is a collection of individuals rather than a single role. An approach geared to creating a mixtocracy can strengthen the board by combining individual differences in a deliberate manner. Differing gender and ethnic backgrounds as well as skills, perspectives, and experiences can make for more rigorous, far-reaching, and thought-provoking discussions, inquiries, and challenges. This can enable the board to provide a more effective counterbalance to management as well as better support in areas such as innovation, disruption, and assessments of strategies, decisions, and underlying assumptions.

In plans for board succession, the uniqueness of thought an individual will bring to the table can be as important as his or her more ostensible characteristics and accomplishments.

Toward greater board diversity

Given its responsibility to provide guidance on strategy, oversight of risk, governance of practices, and protection of shareholders’ interests, the board arguably has a greater need for diversity than the C-suite, where diversity also enriches management. The path forward remains long, but it is becoming increasing clear as boards continue to work toward achieving greater diversity on multiple fronts.

____________________________________

Endnotes

1 2016 Boards Practices Report – A transparent look at the work of the board. Tenth edition, 2017, Society for Corporate Governance and Deloitte Development LLC.(go back)

2 ibid.(go back)

3 ibid.(go back)

4 Missing Pieces Report: The 2016 Board Diversity Census of Women and Minorities on Fortune 500 Boards, 2017, Deloitte Development LLC.(go back)

*The 2017 board diversity survey was conducted in spring 2017 among 300 board members and C-suite executives at U.S. companies with at least $50 million in annual revenue and at least 1,000 employees. Conducted by Wakefield Research via an email invitation and online questionnaire, the survey sought to ascertain respondents’ perspectives on board diversity and their organizations’ criteria and practices for recruiting and selecting board members. The margin of error for this study is +/- 5.7 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.

Dix thèmes prioritaires à mettre à l’ordre du jour des Boards en 2018

Aujourd’hui, je partage avec vous un article de Kerry E. Berchem et Christine B. LaFollette, associés de la firme Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, qui donne un aperçu des principales préoccupations des CA en 2018.

Ce qui est intéressant, outre les thèmes choisis, c’est l’impact de l’agenda de l’administration Trump sur la gouvernance des sociétés, notamment les points suivants :

– Assouplissements de la réglementation de la SEC ;

– Applications des directives de la SEC, en autres les efforts de remplacement de la réforme Dodd-Frank ;

– Nouveaux échanges commerciaux et applications de sanctions plus sévères ;

– La réforme de la fiscalité.

Bonne lecture ! Vos commentaires sont les bienvenus.

Corporate Governance Survey—2017 Proxy Season

Résultats de recherche d'images pour « gouvernance des sociétés cotées » — L’Actualité IFA de la gouvernance des sociétés

Since 2003, Fenwick has collected a unique body of information on the corporate governance practices of publicly traded companies that is useful for Silicon Valley companies and publicly‑traded technology and life science companies across the U.S. as well as public companies and their advisors generally. Fenwick’s annual survey covers a variety of corporate governance practices and data for the companies included in the Standard & Poor’s 100 Index (S&P 100) and the technology and life science companies included in the Silicon Valley [1]

Significant Findings

Governance practices and trends (or perceived trends) among the largest companies are generally presented as normative for all public companies. However, it is also somewhat axiomatic that corporate governance practices should be tailored to suit the circumstances of the individual company involved. Among the significant differences between the corporate governance practices of the SV 150 technology and life science companies and the uniformly large public companies of the S&P 100 are:

Dual‑Class Voting Stock Structure.

Adoption of dual-class voting stock structures has emerged as a recent clear trend among Silicon Valley technology companies—among the mid-to-larger SV 150 companies—though it is still a small percentage of companies. Historically, dual-class voting stock structures have been significantly more common among S&P 100 companies than among SV 150 companies, though the frequency in the SV 150 (11.3% in 2016 to 10.9% in 2017) has surpassed the S&P 100 (9.0% in both 2016 and 2017) in recent years.

Classified Boards

Classified boards are now significantly more common among SV 150 companies than among S&P 100 companies. Compared to the prior year, classified boards remained fairly consistent, holding steady at 6.7% for the top 15 companies in the SV 150 while the S&P 100 has been at 4.0% since 2016.

Majority Voting

The rate of implementation of some form of majority voting has risen substantially over the period of this survey. The increase has been particularly dramatic among S&P 100 companies, rising from 10% to 97% between the 2004 and 2017 proxy seasons. Among SV 150 companies, the rate has risen from zero in the 2005 proxy season to 59.9% in the 2017 proxy season.

Stock Ownership Guidelines

The prevalence of stock ownership guidelines has generally increased over time in both groups but the SV 150 only recently surpassed the level of the S&P 100. This year’s edition of the survey includes additional detail regarding the minimum holding amount and period requirements for executives and directors.

Executives and Directors ‑ Equity, Voting Power Ownership

There is a clear multi-year trend that the distribution of simple equity ownership and voting power ownership skews higher among technology and life sciences companies in the SV 150 than among S&P 100 companies.

Board Diversity

2017 continued the long-term trend in the SV 150 of increasing numbers of women directors and declining numbers of boards without women members. The rate of increase in women directors for SV 150 overall continues to be higher than among S&P 100 companies. When measured as a percentage of the total number of directors, the top 15 of the SV 150 now slightly exceed their S&P 100 peers (the top 15 averaged 25.4% women directors in the 2017 proxy season, compared to 23.9% in the S&P 100). Companies with at least one woman director went from 74% to 78.2% over the past year for the SV 150. Over a two-year period the percentage of companies with at least one woman director grew by 10 percentage points.

Board Size, Meeting Frequency, Leadership

Combined chair/CEOs existed at about one third of companies in the SV 150, while combined chair/CEOs exist at about 72% of S&P 100. SV 150 companies held board meetings more often in fiscal 2016, while S&P 100 companies decreased meeting frequency in 2016 (companies report meetings for the prior year). SV 150 companies, though, continued to skew noticeably toward fewer meetings compared to the S&P 100. Insider directors are more common among members of the boards of SV 150 companies than among board members at S&P 100 companies, though continuing a long-term downward trend. The number of directors also tends to be substantially lower among SV 150 companies than among S&P 100 companies.

Stockholder Proposals

Stockholder activism—measured in the form of proposals included in the proxy statements of companies—is substantially lower among the SV 150 than among S&P 100 companies. There is a current general downward trend of stockholder activism in both groups, although the SV 150 has had an upward trend in number of proposals in recent years. This year each group had just one contested director election. For more detail, please see our post, Silicon Valley and S&P 100: A Comparison of 2017 Proxy Season Results.

Executive Officers

The number of executive officers tends to be substantially lower among SV 150 companies than among the S&P 100, and there continues to be a general decline in the average number of executive officers per company in both groups. By contrast, the percentage of companies including General Counsel, Chief Legal Officer or Chief Technology Officer or engineering executive as “executive officers” have been on a long-term upswing.

Complete Coverage

In complete publication, available here, we present statistical information for a subset of the data we have collected over the years, updating for the 2017 proxy season. These include:

– makeup of board leadership

– number of insider directors

– gender diversity on boards of directors

– size and number of meetings for boards and their primary committees

– frequency and number of other standing committees

– majority voting

– board classification

– use of a dual‑class voting structure

– frequency, coverage and details of executive officer and director stock ownership guidelines

– frequency and number of shareholder proposals

– number and makeup of executive officers

In each case, comparative data is presented for the S&P 100 companies and for the high technology and life science companies included in the SV 150, as well as trend information over the history of the survey. In a number of instances we also present data showing comparison of the top 15, top 50, middle 50 and bottom 50 companies of the SV 150 (in terms of revenue), [2] illustrating the impact of company size or scale on the relevant governance practices.

The complete publication is available here.

———————————————————————————————–

Endnotes

1The S&P 100 is a cross‑section of companies across industries, but is not a cross‑section of companies across all size ranges (it represents the largest companies in the United States). While the SV 150 is made up of the largest public companies in Silicon Valley by one measure—revenue, it is actually a fairly broad cross‑section of companies by size, but is limited to the technology and life science companies based in Silicon Valley. Compared to the S&P 100, SV 150 companies are generally much smaller and younger, have lower revenue. The 2017 constituent companies of the SV 150 range from Apple and Alphabet with revenue of approximately $218B and $90B, respectively, to Aemetis and DSP Group with revenue of approximately $143M and $138M, respectively, in each case for the four quarters ended on or about December 31, 2016. Apple went public in 1980, Alphabet (as Google) in 2004, Aemetis in 2007 and DSP Group in 1994. Apple and Alphabet’s peers clearly include companies in the S&P 100, of which they are also constituent members (eight companies were constituents of both indices for the survey in the 2017 proxy season), where market capitalization averages approximately $130B. Aemetis and DSP Group’s peers are smaller technology and life sciences companies that went public relatively recently and have market capitalizations well under $1B. In terms of number of employees, the SV 150 averages 9,500 employees (with a median of 1,800 employees), ranging from Hewlett Packard Enterprise with 195,000 employees spread around the world in dozens of countries, to companies such as Aemetis with 144 employees in the United States and India, as of the end of their respective fiscal years 2016. The S&P 100 averages 130,000 employees and includes Wal‑Mart with 2.3 million employees in more than two dozen countries at its most recent fiscal year-end.(go back)

2The top 15, top 50, middle 50 and bottom 50 companies of the SV 150 include companies with revenue in the following respective ranges: $8.4B or more, $1.6B or more, $380M but less than $1.6B, and $138M but less than $375M. The respective average market capitalizations of these groups are $178.8B, $66B, $3.3B and $1.2B.(go back

________________________________________________

*David A. Bell is partner in the corporate and securities group at Fenwick & West LLP. This post is based on portions of a Fenwick publication titled Corporate Governance Practices and Trends: A Comparison of Large Public Companies and Silicon Valley Companies (2017 Proxy Season); the complete survey is available here.

Compte rendu hebdomadaire de la Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance | 28 décembre 2017

Voici le compte rendu hebdomadaire du forum de la Harvard Law School sur la gouvernance corporative au 28 décembre 2017.

Cette semaine, j’ai relevé les dix principaux billets.

Bonne lecture !

Compte rendu hebdomadaire de la Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance | 21 décembre 2017

Voici le compte rendu hebdomadaire du forum de la Harvard Law School sur la gouvernance corporative au 21 décembre 2017.

Cette semaine, j’ai relevé les dix principaux billets.

Bonne lecture !

Évolution dans la composition des conseils d’administration aux É.U.

Les changements apportés à la gouvernance des entreprises passent souvent par un renouvellement du membership du conseil d’administration.

Le document publié par Spencer Stuart intitulé 2017 Spencer Stuart Board Index montre que les pressions sont de plus en plus grandes, notamment de la part des investisseurs institutionnels, pour moduler la composition du CA.

Ainsi, tel que le rapporte Julie Daum, Laurel McCarthy et Ann Yerger, dans une publication de Spencer Stuart, les changements sont assez importants, bien que jugés encore trop lents.

Vous trouverez, ci-dessous un résumé de cette publication ainsi que dix (10) suggestions à considérer afin de poursuivre dans la voie du renouvellement de la composition des conseils d’administration.

En cette période des fêtes de Noël et de la nouvelle année, je vous souhaite une lecture agréable et profitable.

Jacques Grisé, Ph. D., F.Adm.A.

Éditeur de ce blogue en gouvernance

Board Composition: A Slow Evolution

Résultats de recherche d'images pour « composition du conseil d'administration spencer stuart » — Conseils d’administration : mesdames, il y a des places à prendre !

Interest in the composition of U.S. boards has never been greater. Pressure for change is coming from many fronts, particularly from institutional and activist investors. We have been tracking board composition issues for more than 30 years, and as the data from our 2017 Spencer Stuart Board Index show, U.S. boards are evolving, slowly.

– The number of new independent directors elected to S&P 500 boards during the 2017 proxy year rose to 397, the most since 2004 and an increase of 15% from 2016.

– For the first time in the history of our survey, just over half (50.1%) of incoming independent directors on S&P 500 boards are women or minorities.

– A record-breaking 45% of the new S&P 500 independent directors are serving on their first public company board.

– Boards are seeking talent beyond C-suite chairs, CEOs, presidents or COOs. Slightly more than a third of new independent directors are active or retired C-suite executives, down from 47% 10 years ago.

– Fewer active CEOs serve on boards. Today only 37% of S&P 500 CEOs serve on one or more outside public company boards, down from 52% 10 years ago.

Calls for greater boardroom diversity—encompassing considerations such as gender, race, age, skills, qualifications and backgrounds—are on the rise. And boards are responding.

Director skills and experiences are changing. Nearly 20% of new independent S&P 500 directors have experience in the technology or telecommunications industries. Directors with backgrounds in banking, finance, investment or accounting are in high demand, representing 29% of new directors in 2017, up from 19% in 2007. Of this group, directors with investing and investment management experience are of particular interest. Thirteen percent (13%) of new directors come from the investment field, up from 5% a decade ago; less than 20% of these directors were appointed under publicized settlements with activist investors.

S&P 500 boards are opening their doors to directors without prior public board experience. These first-time independent directors are more likely than other new directors to be actively employed (64% versus 42%). They are less likely to be C-suite executives and more likely to have other executive experiences, such as division or subsidiary leadership. They are younger, with an average age of 55.2, compared to 57.3 for other incoming independent directors. They are also more likely to be diverse; more than half (55%) of this year’s incoming first-time directors are women or minorities, a significant jump from 37% a year ago.

Female representation among all new independent S&P 500 directors rose to 36% in 2017—the highest percentage we’ve ever tracked—while 20% of incoming independent directors are minorities, defined as African-American, Hispanic/Latino or Asian. (Six percent of the new directors are women and minorities.) Women are increasingly assuming leadership roles on S&P 500 boards, chairing 20% of audit committees, 17% of compensation committees and 22% of nominating committees, up from 15%, 11% and 20%, respectively, in 2016.

Despite these steps forward, the overall pace of change in boardroom diversity remains slow. With 48% of S&P 500 boards adding no directors, board turnover continues to be low and hinders change to the overall composition of U.S. boardrooms.

– Today 22% of all S&P 500 directors are women, up incrementally from 21% in 2016 and 17% in 2012.

– Minority representation at the top 200 S&P 500 companies is low. Seventeen percent (17%) of directors of the top 200 companies are male or female minorities, and representation of African-Americans and Hispanics/Latinos in the top 200 boardrooms has not significantly changed over the past five to 10 years.

Boardroom refreshment faces other headwinds. About three-quarters (73%) of S&P 500 boards report having a mandatory retirement age for directors, unchanged over the past five years, and boards continue to raise retirement ages. Today 42% of S&P 500 companies with retirement policies set their retirement age at 75 or older, compared with 22% in 2012 and just 11% in 2007. Meanwhile, the percentage of S&P 500 companies disclosing some form of individual director assessments is low (37%) and largely unchanged. The data suggest that rather than using evaluations to evaluate director fit in the boardroom, boards are relying on mandatory retirement ages as a primary mechanism for board refreshment.

10 ways boards can continue to evolve

Purposeful leadership by directors is required to continue the evolution in the boardroom. In our experience working with boards, the most effective strategies for building a board composed of the diverse portfolio of skills, qualifications, perspectives and backgrounds matched to the company’s current and future strategic objectives and risks include these 10 elements:

Continuously review the board’s skill sets and performance relative to the company’s strategy and direction. The annual board self-evaluation is a natural platform for the board to review its composition and future needs so that it is in the best position to oversee management as new challenges and market opportunities emerge.
Expand the use of peer and self-evaluations, which can be invaluable tools for providing feedback to and enhancing the performance of new and tenured directors, and for identifying gaps in boardroom skills and experiences.
Take a hard look at formal policies—such as mandatory retirement policies—intended to promote turnover and evaluate whether the policies may be impeding refreshment.
Understand that boardroom diversity, defined broadly but with an emphasis on gender and racial diversity, is of growing interest not just to investors, but also to other key company stakeholders, including employees, suppliers and customers. A tangible commitment to boardroom diversity will be increasingly important, and a “one and done” mentality will be challenged more often in the future, particularly as boards plan for anticipated board vacancies. One approach is to strive to interview several qualified candidates for every open board seat.
Carefully define the expertise that is important for the board—for example, industry or functional knowledge, digital expertise or international experience. Be clear about the perspectives or expertise that the board is looking to gain.
Foster an open mind about what a director candidate should look like and the different ways a director can contribute. Consider senior business unit or functional leaders, including younger executives who may be experts in specific areas such as e-commerce, digital marketing and cybersecurity.
Avoid creating an overly long list of director qualifications, which can limit the talent pool. Be realistic about desired director qualifications; sitting CEOs today are serving on fewer (if any) outside boards. The selection process should cast a wide net and look for the best candidate—not just the one known to board members.
Consider candidates without prior board experience. When assessing first-time candidates, look at their underlying capabilities and mindset—including what we call “board intrinsics,” attributes such as intellectual approach, independent-mindedness, integrity, interpersonal skills and inclination to engage—to understand how likely they are to be able to contribute as well-rounded directors. Spencer Stuart’s Board Intrinsics™ assessment approach focuses on these critical underlying talents and competencies. Candidates who score well in all five areas are most likely to be capable of contributing as “all-round” directors, in addition to the specific knowledge, skill or set of experiences that makes them of interest to boards.
Establish a robust new director orientation program. All new directors—male and female, first-time and experienced—benefit from an orientation program that helps them quickly get up to speed on the business and the company’s approach to governance.
Commit to transparency about board governance practices. With investor attention to board performance on the rise, boards are enhancing their disclosure about key areas of investor interest, including board composition and leadership, director tenure and turnover, board evaluation and performance, and shareholder engagement.

Comment se comporter lors de campagnes menées par des actionnaires activistes | Cinq conseils utiles

Vous trouverez, ci-dessous, une publication des auteurs Steve Wolosky*, Andrew Freedman, et Ron Berenblat, associés de la firme Olshan Frome Wolosky, qui présente, de façon intelligible, ce que les actionnaires activistes doivent prévoir lorsqu’ils décident de faire inscrire de nouveaux administrateurs sur la liste des candidats aux élections annuelles.

Au cours des dernières années, le phénomène de l’activisme a connu une progression assez substantielle. La gouvernance des entreprises passe souvent par une solide compréhension de ce que les actionnaires activistes cherchent à accomplir.

Les entreprises qui ont des lacunes dans la gouvernance (au conseil) et dans l’efficacité des hauts dirigeants (notamment du CEO) sont beaucoup plus susceptibles d’être la cible des campagnes activistes. Les conseils offerts par la firme Olshan Frome Wolosky sont très utiles, autant pour les actionnaires activistes, que pour les dirigeants des entreprises visés. Leurs recommandations à l’intention des activistes portent sur les cinq points ci-dessous.

– Il est temps de présenter des candidatures qui démontrent un souci marqué pour la diversité dans la composition du conseil d’administration. C’est l’un des plus importants critères des firmes de conseils en votation (ISS et Glass Lewis) et des investisseurs institutionnels.

– Lorsque les actionnaires activistes ciblent le CEO d’une organisation, ceux-ci sont invités à la prudence dans la présentation des arguments à l’actionnariat, car il est toujours délicat et difficile de s’attaquer à la tête dirigeante de l’entreprise.

– Les experts de la gouvernance et les groupes d’activistes ont essentiellement mis l’accent sur les opérations américaines. Cependant, au cours des dernières années, on assiste à un activisme de plus en plus international. Les auteurs incitent donc les actionnaires activistes à s’intéresser aux entreprises mondiales, en soulignant que le terrain est souvent plus propice à leurs activités dans certains pays, tels que la Corée du Sud, le Canada, etc. Certains mécanismes de défense légaux qui existent aux États-Unis sont absents des réglementations de plusieurs pays.

– Les auteurs mettent en garde les actionnaires activistes contre des propositions de candidatures considérées comme « illégitimes ». Il arrive que, dans la préparation de dossiers de candidatures de haut calibre, les activistes aient tendance à oublier la règle du maximum de cinq conseils pour un administrateur indépendant et de deux pour un CEO siégeant à d’autres conseils.

– Enfin, les auteurs soulignent le fait que les entreprises utilisent toutes sortes de moyens de défense pour éliminer les candidatures provenant des activistes. Pour eux, qui prêchent pour leurs paroisses, il est crucial de bien connaître les règlements intérieurs de l’entreprise ciblée ainsi que les mécanismes de nomination.

Bien entendu, la firme Olshan Frome Wolosky propose leurs services juridiques afin de maximiser les efforts des activistes !

J’espère que ce bref tour d’horizon du monde de l’actionnariat activiste vous sera utile dans la bonne gouvernance des entreprises dans lesquelles vous êtes impliqués.

Je vous souhaite donc une bonne lecture et j’attends vos commentaires.

Top 5 Things Shareholder Activists Need to Know

Nomination deadlines for the 2018 proxy season are fast approaching. Based on feedback from our shareholder activist clients and colleagues in the activism community, we are preparing for a very busy nomination season, which will begin to pick up steam in the next few weeks and continue into the new year. Drawing from our experience as the leading law firm to shareholder activists—including our involvement in delivering over 55 nomination letters during the past 12 months alone—and our views on current hot-button topics such as board diversity, global activism and the targeting of CEOs, Olshan’s Activist & Equity Investment Group presents you with its list of top 5 things activists should consider before nominating directors for the upcoming proxy season.

1. It’s Time to Diversify

We are beginning to advise our clients to include diversity as a key criterion in selecting their slates of nominees and, in the case of short-slate contests, identifying the incumbent directors they will seek to replace. Board diversity is currently one of the hottest corporate governance topics and will be highly relevant during the upcoming proxy season. In addition to highlighting the inequality engendered by the lack of diversity of current public company boards, there is abundant research showing a correlation between diverse boards and improved financial performance, corporate governance and accountability to shareholders.

As a result, numerous institutional investors have prioritized their efforts to foster greater diversity, particularly gender diversity, in the boardroom. Earlier this year, BlackRock stated that it will reach out to portfolio companies “to better understand their progress on improving gender balance in the boardroom.” Vanguard recently sent an open letter to public companies stating that over the coming years it will focus on gender diversity in the boardroom and that it “expect[s] boards to focus on it as well, and their demonstration of meaningful progress over time will inform our engagement and voting going forward.” State Street voted against the election of directors at 400 portfolio companies that it determined had failed to take adequate measures to address the absence of women in the boardroom. There is a high probability that one or more of these or other like-minded institutional investors will account for a meaningful percentage of the shareholder base in any domestic election contest initiated by an activist.

An activist’s likelihood of success in an election contest is inextricably tied to the qualifications and expertise of the activist’s director slate. Based on the unebbing wave of board diversity awareness and volume of research extolling the strengths of diverse boards, highly-qualified dissident nominees with diverse backgrounds not only improve the quality of the overall dissident slate—and are therefore more likely to be viewed favorably by shareholders—but are also more likely to be better positioned to advance the activist’s platform once elected to the board. For the same reasons, diversity should also be taken into consideration when evaluating which incumbent directors an activist may seek to replace in a short-slate election contest.

2. Beware of CEO “Bloodlust”

Departing from the early days of shareholder activism, there was a noticeable spike during the past year in the number of activist campaigns that sought the removal of members of their targets’ upper management, particularly CEOs. Elliott Management’s election contest against Arconic, which sought to hold CEO Klaus Kleinfeld directly accountable to shareholders, led to Kleinfeld’s departure during the late stages of the campaign. Pressure from Mantle Ridge resulted in the appointment of Hunter Harrison as the new CEO of CSX. After Marcato Capital ran a slate of directors at Buffalo Wild Wings and called upon the company to replace its CEO Sally Smith, Smith announced on the day of the annual meeting her intention to resign as CEO. Just six months later, Buffalo Wild Wings agreed to be acquired by Arby’s Restaurant Group for a hefty premium.

In a recently settled activist situation, Jeereddi Partners and Purple Mountain Capital initially nominated two director candidates for election at Tuesday Morning’s annual meeting, one of which was recruited specifically for the purpose of becoming the next CEO. Interestingly, in a communication to Tuesday Morning’s employees apprising them of the activist incursion, the existing CEO stated that the investor group’s tactic of seeking to replace him reflected a “new norm” of activism:

These activists also seek to have one of their candidates join the management team as CEO. This tactic used by activist investors is common in today’s market environment.

A Wall Street Journal article by David Benoit succinctly identified this trend in its headline—“Activist Investors Have a New Bloodlust: CEOs.”

Despite the growing number of activist campaigns targeting CEOs, activists should think long and hard before going for the jugular. While every situation is different, seeking to replace a director who is also the CEO (even in a short-slate contest) or calling for the ouster of a CEO as part of the activist’s platform in an election contest is still an aggressive strategy. Attempting to remove the principal executive officer of a company may not sit well with other institutional investors or the proxy advisory firms, depending on the facts and circumstances.

This topic was recently addressed by proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (“ISS”) after one of the defense law firms publicly expressed its view that ISS should alter its analytical framework for reviewing proxy contests to take into account whether the dissident is seeking to replace a CEO/director. In commentary issued by ISS dismissing the need to change its analytical framework in this manner, ISS stated:

… the notion that ISS does not already view the targeting of a CEO as an unusual and significant factor—and thus worthy of careful consideration in a short-slate fight—would be a misrepresentation of our framework.

The removal of a CEO from a board represents a vote of no-confidence that carries further-reaching consequences than the removal of most other directors. However, in instances of demonstrably poor execution, operational issues, or undue management influence over the board, such targeting may be appropriate—provided that the consequent risks have been properly assessed.

ISS’ perspective on this topic is highly instructive and, in our view, should be applied broadly by an activist when evaluating whether to target a CEO. Activists should understand that the standard will be higher for obtaining shareholder support and ISS’ recommendation to remove the CEO from the board in an election contest. As ISS points out above, the facts and circumstances of a particular situation could make the targeting of a CEO appropriate, and hence a winning strategy for an activist. Nevertheless, activists should proceed with caution before going down this path.

3. Let’s Go Global

As the activism space gets more and more crowded in the U.S. as a result of an increasing number of activists and bloated war chests activist managers are tasked to deploy, opportunities abound in Europe, Asia and Australia. The corporate governance regimes of certain of these jurisdictions are actually more favorable to shareholders than in the U.S. and the breadth of legal and structural defenses that are commonly utilized by targets in the U.S. are not present in many of these countries. We would even characterize certain countries as “wide open” for shareholder activism. In South Korea, President Moon Jae-in and other government officials are actually inviting foreign shareholders to invest in South Korean companies and play activist roles in overseeing their investments as the administration attempts to promote a culture of accountability to foreign and minority shareholders that South Korea historically lacked.

Offshore campaigns recently commenced by U.S. activist titans are capturing headlines. Third Point is putting pressure on Swiss conglomerate Nestlé to improve productivity, divest non-priority assets and return capital to shareholders. Corvex Management successfully blocked Swiss chemical giant Clariant’s proposed merger with Huntsman. Elliott Management has multiple active situations in Europe, Asia and Australia.

These high-profile campaigns are not isolated incidents. Shareholder activists of all sizes and vintages are taking companies to task all over the globe. In fact, over 290 non-U.S. companies were publicly subjected to activist demands during 2017 (through October 31) according to Activist Insight Online. The action is not only in the U.S.

Activists who are willing to cast a wider net in evaluating potential situations may find prime opportunities abroad. Olshan has experience advising activists in Canada, Europe and Asia and has relationships with law firms, solicitors and consultants all over the globe who can advise on local securities laws, proxy mechanics and cultural considerations that are unique to each jurisdiction.

4. Don’t Go Overboard

Activists should make sure each of their director nominees complies with the “overboarding” guidelines of the two leading proxy advisory firms—ISS and Glass Lewis. Under the current ISS proxy voting guidelines, ISS will generally recommend a vote against or withhold from an individual director nominee who (i) serves on more than five public company boards, or (ii) is CEO of a public company who serves on the boards of more than two public companies (besides his or her own); provided that the negative vote recommendation will only apply to the CEO’s outside boards. ISS may give a positive recommendation for an overboarded nominee after he or she undertakes to gain compliance with the guideline by resigning from an existing directorship if elected at the meeting in question.

Under the Glass Lewis guidelines, Glass Lewis will generally recommend a vote against an individual director nominee who (i) serves on more than five public company boards, or (ii) is an executive officer of a public company while serving on a total of more than two public company boards. Glass Lewis may refrain from making a negative vote recommendation on overboarded nominees if provided with “sufficient rationale” for their board service.

Given the importance of obtaining ISS and Glass Lewis support in most election contests, it is critical that activists take measures to ensure that their nominees are not overboarded. This can be done by requiring prospective nominees to provide updated bios or resumes, including all current directorships and executive officer positions. This is typically covered by Olshan’s form of nominee questionnaire we recommend all our activist clients obtain from their prospective nominees prior to nominating. Nominees should also be made aware of the overboarding requirements and reminded to consult with the activist before accepting additional directorships or executive officer positions prior to the meeting date.

5. Sweat the Mechanics

Failure to pay close attention to the mechanics involved in the nomination process could allow the target company to gain the upper hand or even derail the activist’s campaign in its entirety. Activists who are in the process of evaluating a potential campaign should contact us early in the process so we can begin to identify and work through all the mechanics, which could be complex and involve more than just putting shares in record name in order to validly nominate.

Understanding the company’s advance notice procedures for nominating directors typically contained in the bylaws is critical from both a timing and strategic standpoint. Activists should not necessarily rely on any nomination deadline set forth in the prior year’s proxy statement as these deadlines are often erroneously calculated by the company under the advance notice procedures contained in the bylaws or confused with the Rule 14a-8 deadline due to sloppy drafting. Allowing us sufficient time to review the nomination procedures in the bylaws will ensure that everyone is working with the correct nomination deadline and monitoring the company’s public filings and press releases for the meeting date. This is critical as under most nomination procedures, companies have the ability to accelerate the nomination deadline by announcing a meeting date that is a certain number of days (typically more than 30 or 60 days) before the anniversary of the previous year’s meeting.

Companies are artfully expanding their nomination procedures in order to flush out activists earlier in the process and to make it more expensive for them to nominate. For example, there is a good chance the nomination procedures will contain a requirement that the dissident nominees complete and sign the target company’s director questionnaires for inclusion in the activist’s nomination package. If this is the case, we will need to reach out to company counsel in order to obtain the form of questionnaire prior to the nomination deadline. Getting us involved early can allow us to ensure that the company does not use the nominee questionnaire requirement as a defensive tactic. We are aware of companies whose nomination procedures give them up to 10 days to provide the form of questionnaire after one has been requested by a shareholder. For such companies, we would need to request the form of questionnaire more than 10 days prior to the nomination deadline in order to be in a position to receive the form of questionnaire and submit a complete nomination package prior to the deadline. Otherwise, the company would be permitted to wait until after the nomination deadline before providing a form of questionnaire, thereby preventing the activist from being in technical compliance with the advance nomination procedures.

_____________________________________________________________

*Steve Wolosky, Andrew Freedman, and Ron Berenblat are partners at Olshan Frome Wolosky LLP. This post is based on an Olshan publication by Mr. Wolosky, Mr. Freedman, and Mr. Berenblat. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes Dancing With Activists by Lucian Bebchuk, Alon Brav, Wei Jang, and Thomas Keusch (discussed on the Forum here).

Rôle du CA dans l’établissement d’une forte culture organisationnelle | Un guide pratique

Vous trouverez, ci-dessous, un document partagé par Joanne Desjardins*, qui porte sur le rôle du CA dans l’établissement d’une solide culture organisationnelle.

C’est certainement l’un des guides les plus utiles sur le sujet. Il s’agit d’une référence essentielle en matière de gouvernance.

Je vous invite à lire le sommaire exécutif. Vos commentaires sont appréciés.

Managing Culture | A good practical guide – December 2017

Executive summary

In Australia, the regulators Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) have both signalled that there are significant risks around poor corporate culture. ASIC recognises that culture is at the heart of how an organisation and its staff think and behave, while APRA directs boards to define the institution’s risk appetite and establish a risk management strategy, and to ensure management takes the necessary steps to monitor and manage material risks. APRA takes a broad approach to ‘risk culture’ – includingrisk emerging from a poor culture.

Regulators across the globe are grappling with the issue of risk culture and how best to monitor it. While regulators generally do not dictate a cultural framework, they have identified common areas that may influence an organisation’s risk culture: leadership, good governance, translating values and principles into practices, measurement and accountability, effective communication and challenge, recruitment and incentives. Ultimately, the greatest risk lies in organisations that are believed to be hypocritical when it comes to the espoused versus actual culture.

The board is ultimately responsible for the definition and oversight of culture. In the US, Mary Jo White, Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), recognised that a weak risk culture is the root cause of many large governancefailures, and that the board must set the ‘tone at the top’.

Culture also has an important role to play in risk management and risk appetite, and can pose significant risks that may affect an organisation’s long-term viability.

However, culture is much more about people than it is about rules. This guide argues that an ethical framework – which is different from a code of ethics or a code of conduct – should sit at the heart of the governance framework of an organisation. An ethical framework includes a clearly espoused purpose, supported by values and principles.

There is no doubt that increasing attention is being given to the ethical foundations of an organisation as a driving force of culture, and one method of achieving consistency of organisational conduct is to build an ethical framework in which employees can function effectively by achieving clarity about what the organisation deems to be a ‘good’ or a ‘right’ decision.

Culture can be measured by looking at the extent to which the ethical framework of the organisation is perceived to be or is actually embedded within day-to-day practices. Yet measurement and evaluation of culture is in its early stages, and boards and senior management need to understand whether the culture they have is the culture they want.

In organisations with strong ethical cultures, the systems and processes of the organisation will align with the ethical framework. And people will use the ethical framework in the making of day-to-day decisions – both large and small.

Setting and embedding a clear ethical framework is not just the role of the board and senior management – all areas can play a role. This publication provides high-level guidance to these different roles:

The board is responsible for setting the tone at the top. The board should set the ethical foundations of the organisation through the ethical framework. Consistently, the board needs to be assured that the ethical framework is embedded within the organisation’s systems, processes and culture.

Management is responsible for implementing and monitoring the desired culture as defined and set by the board. They are also responsible for demonstrating leadership of the culture.

Human resources (HR) is fundamental in shaping, reinforcing and changing corporate culture within an organisation. HR drives organisational change programs that ensure cultural alignment with the ethical framework of the organisation. HR provides alignment to the ethical framework through recruitment, orientation, training, performance management, remuneration and other incentives.

Internal audit assesses how culture is being managed and monitored, and can provide an independent view of the current corporate culture.

External audit provides an independent review of an entity’s financial affairs according to legislative requirements, and provides the audit committee with valuable, objective insight into aspects of the entity’s governance and internal controls including its risk management.

*Joanne Desjardins est administratrice de sociétés et consultante en gouvernance. Elle possède plus de 18 années d’expérience comme avocate et comme consultante en gouvernance, en stratégie et en gestion des ressources humaines. Elle est constamment à l’affût des derniers développements en gouvernance et publie des articles sur le sujet.

Compte rendu hebdomadaire de la Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance | 14 décembre 2017

Voici le compte rendu hebdomadaire du forum de la Harvard Law School sur la gouvernance corporative au 14 décembre 2017.

Cette semaine, j’ai relevé les dix principaux billets.

Bonne lecture !

Compte rendu hebdomadaire de la Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance | 7 décembre 2017

Voici le compte rendu hebdomadaire du forum de la Harvard Law School sur la gouvernance corporative au 7 décembre 2017.

Cette semaine, j’ai relevé les dix principaux billets.

Bonne lecture !

Nouvelles perspectives pour la gouvernance en 2018

Aujourd’hui, je vous propose la lecture d’un excellent article de Martin Lipton* sur les nouvelles perspectives de la gouvernance en 2018. Cet article est publié sur le site du Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance.

Après une brève introduction portant sur les meilleures pratiques observées dans les entreprises cotées, l’auteur se penche sur les paramètres les plus significatifs de la nouvelle gouvernance.

Les thèmes suivants sont abordés dans un contexte de renouvellement de la gouvernance pour le futur :

La notion de l’actionnariat élargie pour tenir compte des parties prenantes ;
L’importance de considérer le développement durable et la responsabilité sociale des entreprises ;
L’adoption de stratégies favorisant l’engagement à long terme ;
La nécessité de se préoccuper de la composition des membres du CA ;
L’approche à adopter eu égard aux comportements d’actionnaires/investisseurs activistes ;
Les attentes eu égard aux rôles et responsabilités des administrateurs.

À l’approche de la nouvelle année 2018, cette lecture devrait compter parmi les plus utiles pour les administrateurs et les dirigeants d’entreprises ainsi que pour toute personne intéressée par l’évolution des pratiques de gouvernance.

Bonne lecture ! Vos commentaires sont appréciés.

Some Thoughts for Boards of Directors in 2018

Introduction

As 2017 draws to a conclusion and we reflect on the evolution of corporate governance since the turn of the millennium, a recurring question percolating in boardrooms and among shareholders and other stakeholders, academics and politicians is: what’s next on the horizon for corporate governance? In many respects, we seem to have reached a point of relative stasis. The governance and takeover defense profiles of U.S. public companies have been transformed by the widespread adoption of virtually all of the “best practices” advocated to enhance the rights of shareholders and weaken takeover defenses.

While the future issues of corporate governance remain murky, there are some emerging themes that portend a potentially profound shift in the way that boards will need to think about their roles and priorities in guiding the corporate enterprise. While these themes are hardly new, they have been gaining momentum in prompting a rethinking of some of the most basic assumptions about corporations, corporate governance and the path forward.

First, while corporate governance continues to be focused on the relationship between boards and shareholders, there has been a shift toward a more expansive view that is prompting questions about the broader role and purpose of corporations. Most of the governance reforms of the past few decades targeted the ways in which boards are structured and held accountable to the interests of shareholders, with debates often boiling down to trade-offs between a board-centric versus a more shareholder-centric framework and what will best create shareholder value. Recently, efforts to invigorate a more long-term perspective among both corporations and their investors have been laying the groundwork for a shift from these process-oriented debates to elemental questions about the basic purpose of corporations and how their success should be measured and defined.

In particular, sustainability has become a major, mainstream governance topic that encompasses a wide range of issues such as climate change and other environmental risks, systemic financial stability, labor standards, and consumer and product safety. Relatedly, an expanded notion of stakeholder interests that includes employees, customers, communities, and the economy and society as a whole has been a developing theme in policymaking and academic spheres as well as with investors. As summarized in a 2017 report issued by State Street Global Advisor,

“Today’s investors are looking for ways to put their capital to work in a more sustainable way, one focused on long-term value creation that enables them to address their financial goals and responsible investing needs. So, for a growing number of institutional investors, the environmental, social and governance (ESG) characteristics of their portfolio are key to their investment strategy.”

While both sustainability and expanded constituency considerations have been emphasized most frequently in terms of their impact on long-term shareholder value, they have also been prompting fresh dialogue about the societal role and purpose of corporations.

Another common theme that underscores many of the corporate governance issues facing boards today is that corporate governance is inherently complex and nuanced, and less amenable to the benchmarking and quantification that was a significant driver in the widespread adoption of corporate governance “best practices.” Prevailing views about what constitutes effective governance have morphed from a relatively binary, check-the-box mentality—such as whether a board is declassified, whether shareholders can act by written consent and whether companies have adopted majority voting standards—to tackling questions such as how to craft a well-rounded board with the skills and experiences that are most relevant to a particular corporation, how to effectively oversee the company’s management of risk, and how to forge relationships with shareholders that meaningfully enhance the company’s credibility. Companies and investors alike have sought to formulate these “next generation” governance issues in a way that facilitates comparability, objective assessment and accountability. For example, many companies have been including skills matrices in their proxy statements to show, in a visual snapshot, that their board composition encompasses appropriate skills and experiences. Yet, to the extent that complicated governance issues cannot be reduced to simple, user-friendly metrics, it remains to be seen whether this will prompt new ways of defining “good” corporate governance that require a deeper understanding of companies and their businesses, and the impact that could have on the expectations and practices of stakeholders.

Against this backdrop, a few of the more significant issues that boards of directors will face in the coming year, as well as an overview of some key roles and responsibilities, are highlighted below. Parts II through VI contain brief summaries of some of the leading proposals and thinking for corporate governance of the future. In Part VII, we turn to the issues boards of directors will face in 2018 and suggestions as to how to prepare to deal with them.

Expanded Stakeholders

The primacy of shareholder value as the exclusive objective of corporations, as articulated by Milton Friedman and then thoroughly embraced by Wall Street, has come under scrutiny by regulators, academics, politicians and even investors. While the corporate governance initiatives of the past year cannot be categorized as an abandonment of the shareholder primacy agenda, there are signs that academic commentators, legislators and some investors are looking at more nuanced and tempered approaches to creating shareholder value.

In his 2013 book, Firm Commitment: Why the Corporation is Failing Us and How to Restore Trust in It, and a series of brilliant articles and lectures, Colin Mayer of the University of Oxford has convincingly rejected shareholder value primacy and put forth proposals to reconceive the business corporation so that it is committed to all its stakeholders, including the community and the general economy. His new book, Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2018, continues the theme of his earlier publications and will be required reading.

Similarly, an influential working paper by Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales argues that the appropriate objective of the corporation is shareholder welfare rather than shareholder wealth. Hart and Zingales advocate that corporations and asset managers should pursue policies consistent with the preferences of their investors, specifically because corporations may be able to accomplish objectives that shareholders acting individually cannot. In such a setting, the implicit separability assumption underlying Milton Friedman’s theory of the purpose of the firm fails to produce the best outcome for shareholders. Indeed, even though Hart and Zingales propose a revision that remains shareholder-centered, by recognizing the unique capability of corporations to engage in certain kinds of activities, their theory invites a careful consideration of other goals such as sustainability, board diversity and employee welfare, and even such social concerns, as, for example, reducing mass violence or promoting environmental stewardship. Such a model of corporate decision-making emphasizes the importance of boards establishing a relationship with significant shareholders to understand shareholder goals, beyond simply assuming that an elementary wealth maximization framework is the optimal path.

Perhaps closer to a wholesale rejection of the shareholder primacy agenda, an article by Joseph L. Bower and Lynn S. Paine, featured in the May-June 2017 issue of the Harvard Business Review, attacks the fallacies of the economic theories that have been used since 1970 to justify shareholder-centric corporate governance, short-termism and activist attacks on corporations. In questioning the benefits of hedge fund activism, Bower and Paine argue that some of the value purportedly created for shareholders by activists is not actually value created, but rather value transferred from other parties or from the public purse, such as shifting a company’s tax domicile to a lower-tax jurisdiction or eliminating exploratory research and development. The article supports the common sense notion that boards have a fiduciary duty not just to shareholders, but also to employees, customers and the community—a constituency theory of governance penned into law in a number of states’ business corporation laws.

Moreover, this theme has been metastasizing from a theoretical debate into specific reform initiatives that, if implemented, could have a direct impact on boards. For example, Delaware and 32 other states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation approving a new corporate form—the benefit corporation —a for-profit corporate entity with expanded fiduciary obligations of boards to consider other stakeholders in addition to shareholders. Benefit corporations are mandated by law to consider their overall positive impact on society, their workers, the communities in which they operate and the environment, in addition to the goal of maximizing shareholder profit.

This broader sense of corporate purpose has been gaining traction among shareholders. For example, the endorsement form for the Principles published by the Investor Stewardship Group in 2017 includes:

“[I]t is the fiduciary responsibility of all asset managers to conduct themselves in accordance with the preconditions for responsible engagement in a manner that accrues to the best interests of stakeholders and society in general, and that in so doing they’ll help to build a framework for promoting long-term value creation on behalf of U.S. companies and the broader U.S. economy.”

Notions of expanded stakeholder interests have often been incorporated into the concept of long-termism, and advocating a long-term approach has also entailed the promotion of a broader range of stakeholder interests without explicitly eroding the primacy of shareholder value. Recently, however, the interests of other stakeholders have increasingly been articulated in their own right rather than as an adjunct to the shareholder-centric model of corporate governance. Ideas about the broader social purpose of corporations have the potential to drive corporate governance reforms into uncharted territory requiring navigation of new questions about how to measure and compare corporate performance, how to hold companies accountable and how to incentivize managers.

Sustainability

The meaning of sustainability is no longer limited to describing environmental practices, but rather more broadly encompasses the sustainability of a corporation’s business model in today’s fast-changing world. The focus on sustainability encompasses the systemic sustainability of public markets and pressures boards to think about corporate strategy and how governance should be structured to respond to and compete in this environment.

Recently, the investing world has seen a rise of ESG-oriented funds—previously a small, niche segment of the investment community. Even beyond these specialized funds, ESG has also become a focus of a broad range of traditional investment funds and institutional investors. For instance, BlackRock and State Street both offer their investors products that specifically focus on ESG-oriented topics like climate change and impact investing—investing with an intention of generating a specific social or environmental outcome alongside financial returns.

At the beginning of 2017, State Street’s CEO Ronald P. O’Hanley wrote a letter advising the boards of the companies in which State Street invests that State Street defines sustainability “as encompassing a broad range of environmental, social and governance issues that include, for example, effective independent board leadership and board composition, diversity and talent development, safety issues, and climate change.” The letter was a reminder that broader issues that impact all of a company’s stakeholders may have a material effect on a company’s ability to generate returns. Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, Laurence D. Fink remarked similarly in his January 2017 letter that

“[e]nvironmental, social and governance factors relevant to a company’s business can provide essential insights into management effectiveness and thus a company’s long-term prospects. We look to see that a company is attuned to the key factors that contribute to long-term growth: sustainability of the business model and its operations, attention to external and environmental factors that could impact the company, and recognition of the company’s role as a member of the communities in which it operates.”

Similarly, the UN Principles for Responsible Investment remind corporations that ESG factors should be incorporated into all investment decisions to better manage risk and generate sustainable, long-term returns.

Shareholders’ engagement with ESG issues has also increased. Previously, ESG was somewhat of a fringe issue with ESG-related shareholder proxy proposals rarely receiving significant shareholder support. This is no longer the case. In the 2017 proxy season, the two most common shareholder proposal topics related to social (201 proposals) and environmental (144 proposals, including 69 on climate change) issues, as opposed to 2016’s top two topics of proxy access (201) and social issues (160). Similar to cybersecurity and other risk management issues, sustainability practices involve the nuts and bolts of operations—e.g., life-cycle assessments of a product and management of key performance indicators (KPIs) using management information systems that facilitate internal and public reporting—and provide another example of an operational issue that has become a board/governance issue.

The expansion of sustainability requires all boards—not just boards of companies with environmentally sensitive businesses—to be aware of and be ready to respond to ESG-related concerns. The salient question is whether “best” sustainability practices will involve simply the “right” messaging and disclosures, or whether investors and companies will converge on a method to measure sustainability practices that affords real impact on capital allocation, risk-taking and proactive—as opposed to reactive—strategy.

Indeed, measurement and accountability are perhaps the elephants in the room when it comes to sustainability. Many investors appear to factor sustainability into their investing decisions. Other ways to measure sustainability practices include the presence of a Chief Sustainability Officer or Corporate Responsibility Committee. However, while there are numerous disclosure frameworks relating to sustainability and ESG practices, there is no centralized ESG rating system. Further, rating methodologies and assessments of materiality vary widely across ESG data providers and disclosure requirements vary across jurisdictions.

Pending the development of clear and agreed standards to benchmark performance on ESG issues, boards of directors should focus on understanding how their significant investors value and measure ESG issues, including through continued outreach and engagement with investors focusing on these issues, and should seek tangible agreed-upon methodologies to address these areas, while also promoting the development of improved metrics and disclosure.

Promoting a Long-Term Perspective

As the past year’s corporate governance conversation has explored considerations outside the goal of maximizing shareholder value, the conversation within the shareholder value maximization framework has also continued to shift toward an emphasis on long-term value rather than short term. A February 2017 discussion paper from the McKinsey Global Institute in cooperation with Focusing Capital on the Long Term found that long-term focused companies, as measured by a number of factors including investment, earnings quality and margin growth, generally outperformed shorter-term focused companies in both financial and other performance measures. Long-term focused companies had greater, and less volatile, revenue growth, more spending on research and development, greater total returns to shareholders and more employment than other firms.

This empirical evidence that corporations focused on stakeholders and long-term investment contribute to greater economic growth and higher GDP is consistent with innovative corporate governance initiatives. A new startup, comprised of veterans of the NYSE and U.S. Treasury Department, is working on creating the “Long-Term Stock Exchange”—a proposal to build and operate an entirely new stock exchange where listed companies would have to satisfy not only all of the normal SEC requirements to allow shares to trade on other regulated U.S. stock markets but, in addition, other requirements such as tenured shareholder voting power (permitting shareholder voting to be proportionately weighted by the length of time the shares have been held), mandated ties between executive pay and long-term business performance and disclosure requirements informing companies who their long-term shareholders are and informing investors of what companies’ long-term investments are.

In addition to innovative alternatives, numerous institutional investors and corporate governance thought leaders are rethinking the mainstream relationship between all boards of directors and institutional investors to promote a healthier focus on long-term investment. While legislative reform has taken a stronger hold in the U.K. and Europe, leading American companies and institutional investors are pushing for a private sector solution to increase long-term economic growth. Commonsense Corporate Governance Principles and The New Paradigm: A Roadmap for an Implicit Corporate Governance Partnership Between Corporations and Investors to Achieve Sustainable Long-Term Investment and Growth were published in hopes of recalibrating the relationship between boards and institutional investors to protect the economy against the short-term myopic approach to management and investing that promises to impede long-term economic prosperity. Under a similar aim, the Investor Stewardship Group published its Stewardship Principles and Corporate Governance Principles, set to become effective in January 2018, to establish a framework with six principles for investor stewardship and six principles for corporate governance to promote long-term value creation in American business. A Synthesized Paradigm for Corporate Governance, Investor Stewardship, and Engagement provides a synthesis of these and others in the hope that companies and investors would agree on a common approach. In fact, over 100 companies to date have signed The Compact for Responsive and Responsible Leadership: A Roadmap for Sustainable Long-Term Growth and Opportunity, sponsored by the World Economic Forum, which includes the key features of The New Paradigm.

Similarly, the BlackRock Investment Stewardship team has proactively outlined five focus areas for its engagement efforts: Governance, Corporate Strategy for the Long-Term, Executive Compensation that Promotes Long-Termism, Disclosure of Climate Risks, and Human Capital Management. BlackRock’s outline reflects a number of key trends, including heightened transparency by institutional investors, more engagement by “passive” investors, and continued disintermediation of proxy advisory firms. In the United Kingdom, The Investor Forum was founded to provide an intermediary to represent the views of its investor members to investee companies in the hope of reducing activism, and appears to have achieved a successful start.

Similarly, in June 2017, the Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism and Ernst & Young jointly announced the launch of a project on long-term value creation. Noting among other elements that trust and social cohesion are necessary ingredients for the long-term success of capitalism, the project will emphasize reporting mechanisms and credible measurements supporting long-term value, developing and testing a framework to better reflect the full value companies create beyond simply financial value. There is widespread agreement that focusing on long-term investment will promote long-term economic growth. The next step is a consensus between companies and investors on a common path of action that will lead to restored trust and cohesion around long-term goals.

Board Composition

The corporate governance conversation has become increasingly focused on board composition, including board diversity. Recent academic studies have confirmed and expanded upon existing empirical evidence that hedge fund activism has been notably counterproductive in increasing gender diversity—yet another negative externality of this type of activism. Statistical evidence supports the hypothesis that the rate of shareholder activism is higher toward female CEOs holding all else equal, including industries, company sizes and levels of performance. A study forthcoming in the Journal of Applied Psychology investigated the reasons that hedge fund activists seemingly ignore the evidence for gender-diverse boards in their choices for director nominees and disproportionately target female CEOs. The authors suggest these reasons may include subconscious biases of hedge funds against women leaders due to perceptions and cultural attitudes.

In the United Kingdom, the focus on board diversity has spread into policy. The House of Commons Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy Committee report on Corporate Governance, issued in 2017, included recommendations for improving ethnic, gender and social diversity of boards, noting that “[to] be an effective board, individual directors need different skills, experience, personal attributes and approaches.” The U.K. government’s response to this report issued in September 2017 notes its agreement on various diversity-related issues, stating that the “Government agrees with the Committee that it makes business sense to recruit directors from as broad a base as possible across the demographic of the UK” and further, tying into themes of stakeholder capitalism, that the “Government believes that greater diversity within the boardroom can help companies connect with their workforces, supply chains, customers and shareholders.”

In the United States, institutional investors are focused on a range of board composition issues, including term limits, board refreshment, diversity, skills matrices and board evaluation processes, as well as disclosures regarding these issues. In a recent letter, Vanguard explained that it considers the board to be “one of a company’s most critical strategic assets” and looks for a “high-functioning, well-composed, independent, diverse, and experienced board with effective ongoing evaluation practices,” stating that “Good governance starts with a great Board.” The New York Comptroller’s Boardroom Accountability Project 2.0 is focused on increasing diversity of boards in order to strengthen their independence and competency. In connection with launching this campaign, the NYC Pension Funds asked the boards of 151 U.S. companies to disclose the race and gender of their directors alongside board members’ skills in a standardized matrix format. And yet, similar to the difficulty of measuring and comparing sustainability efforts of companies, investors and companies alike continue to struggle with how to measure and judge a board’s diversity, and board composition generally, as the conversation becomes more nuanced. Board composition and diversity aimed at increasing board independence and competency is not a topic that lends itself to a “check-the-box” type measurement.

In light of the heightened emphasis on board composition, boards should consider increasing their communications with their major shareholders about their director selection and nomination processes to show the board understands the importance of its composition. Boards should consider disclosing how new director candidates are identified and evaluated, how committee chairs and the lead director are determined, and how the operations of the board as a whole and the performance of each director are assessed. Boards may also focus on increasing tutorials, facility visits, strategic retreats and other opportunities to increase the directors’ understanding of the company’s business—and communicate such efforts to key shareholders and constituents.

Activism

Despite the developments and initiatives striving to protect and promote long-term investment, the most dangerous threat to long-term economic prosperity has continued to surge in the past year. There has been a significant increase in activism activity in countries around the world and no slowdown in the United States. The headlines of 2017 were filled with activists who do not fit the description of good stewards of the long-term interests of the corporation. A must-read Bloombergarticle described Paul Singer, founder of Elliott Management Corp., which manages $34 billion of assets, as “aggressive, tenacious and litigious to a fault” and perhaps “the most feared activist investor in the world.” Numerous recent activist attacks underscore that the CEO remains a favored activist target. Several major funds have become more nuanced and taken a merchant banker approach of requesting board representation to assist a company to improve operations and strategy for long-term success. No company is too big for an activist attack. Substantial new capital has been raised by activist hedge funds and several activists have created special purpose funds for investment in a single target. As long as activism remains a serious threat, the economy will continue to experience the negative externalities of this approach to investing—companies attempting to avoid an activist attack are increasingly managed for the short term, cutting important spending on research and development and focusing on short-term profits by effecting share buybacks and paying dividends at the expense of investing in a strategy for long-term growth.

To minimize the impact of activist attacks, boards must focus on building relationships with major institutional investors. The measure of corporate governance success has shifted from checking the right boxes to building the right relationships. Major institutional investors have reiterated their commitment to bringing a long-term perspective to public companies, including, for example, Vanguard, which sent an open letter to directors of public companies world-wide explaining that a long-term perspective informed every aspect of its investment approach. Only by forging relationships of trust and credibility with long-term shareholders can a company expect to gain support for its long-term strategy when it needs it. In many instances, when an activist does approach, a previously established relationship provides a foundation for management and the board to persuade key shareholders that short-term activism is not in their best interest—an effort that is already showing some promise. General Motors’ resounding defeat of Greenlight Capital’s attempt to gain shareholder approval to convert its common stock into two classes shows a large successful company’s ability to garner the

support of its institutional investors against financial engineering. Trian’s recent proxy fight against Procter & Gamble shows the importance of proactively establishing relationships with long-term shareholders. Given Trian’s proven track record of success in urging changes in long-term strategy, Nelson Peltz was able to gain support for a seat on P&G’s board from proxy advisors and major institutional investors. We called attention to important lessons from this proxy fight (discussed on the Forum here and here).

Spotlight on Boards

The ever-evolving challenges facing corporate boards prompts an updated snapshot of what is expected from the board of directors of a major public company—not just the legal rules, but also the aspirational “best practices” that have come to have equivalent influence on board and company behavior. In the coming year, boards will be expected to:

Oversee corporate strategy and the communication of that strategy to investors;

Set the tone at the top to create a corporate culture that gives priority to ethical standards, professionalism, integrity and compliance in setting and implementing strategic goals;

Choose the CEO, monitor the CEO’s and management’s performance and develop a succession plan;

Determine the agendas for board and committee meetings and work with management to assure appropriate information and sufficient time are available for full consideration of all matters;

Determine the appropriate level of executive compensation and incentive structures, with awareness of the potential impact of compensation structures on business priorities and risk-taking, as well as investor and proxy advisor views on compensation;

Develop a working partnership with the CEO and management and serve as a resource for management in charting the appropriate course for the corporation;

Oversee and understand the corporation’s risk management and compliance efforts, and how risk is taken into account in the corporation’s business decision-making; respond to red flags when and if they arise (see Risk Management and the Board of Directors, discussed on the Forum here);

Monitor and participate, as appropriate, in shareholder engagement efforts, evaluate potential corporate governance proposals and anticipate possible activist attacks in order to be able to address them more effectively;

Evaluate the board’s performance on a regular basis and consider the optimal board and committee composition and structure, including board refreshment, expertise and skill sets, independence and diversity, as well as the best way to communicate with investors regarding these issues;

Review corporate governance guidelines and committee charters and tailor them to promote effective board functioning;

Be prepared to deal with crises; and

Be prepared to take an active role in matters where the CEO may have a real or perceived conflict, including takeovers and attacks by activist hedge funds focused on the CEO.

To meet these expectations, major public companies should seek to:

Have a sufficient number of directors to staff the requisite standing and special committees and to meet expectations for diversity;

Have directors who have knowledge of, and experience with, the company’s businesses, even if this results in the board having more than one director who is not “independent”;

Have directors who are able to devote sufficient time to preparing for and attending board and committee meetings;

Meet investor expectations for director age, diversity and periodic refreshment;

Provide the directors with the data that is critical to making sound decisions on strategy, compensation and capital allocation;

Provide the directors with regular tutorials by internal and external experts as part of expanded director education; and

Maintain a truly collegial relationship among and between the company’s senior executives and the members of the board that enhances the board’s role both as strategic partner and as monitor.

______________________________________

*Martin Lipton is a founding partner of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, specializing in mergers and acquisitions and matters affecting corporate policy and strategy. This post is based on a Wachtell Lipton publication by Mr. Lipton, Steven A. Rosenblum, Karessa L. Cain, Sabastian V. Niles, Vishal Chanani, and Kathleen C. Iannone.

Compte rendu hebdomadaire de la Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance | 30 novembre 2017

Voici le compte rendu hebdomadaire du forum de la Harvard Law School sur la gouvernance corporative au 30 novembre 2017.

Cette semaine, j’ai relevé les dix principaux billets.

Bonne lecture !

Amélioration de la gouvernance dans les pays anglophones | Une étude de ISS

Voici une étude de l’évolution de la gouvernance publiée par Subodh Mishra, directeur exécutif de l’Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS).

Cette étude porte sur la performance de quatre pays avec lesquels nous avons beaucoup en commun : États-Unis, Canada, Australie et Royaume-Uni.

Le sommaire exécutif ci-dessous vous donnera une idée très juste de l’état de la gouvernance dans les pays anglophones.

Bonne lecture !

Governance Improvements in 2017

[On Thursday, November 23], the United States celebrates Thanksgiving, a holiday that has roots across many cultures in celebrating a bountiful harvest. And so we thought it fitting to take this week to appreciate the year’s harvest of advances in corporate governance that companies around the world have made since the beginning of the year. While issuers and investors no doubt have their plates full (pun intended) with more complex and numerous governance topics to consider, they have plenty of reasons to cherish the positive changes resulting from their labors throughout the past year.

In our effort to identify reasons to give thanks in the corporate governance world, we reviewed ISS’ Governance QualityScore factors for four select markets (the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia). In this assessment, we look at net improvement in each governance factor by counting the number of companies where practices improved and subtracting the number of companies whose practice deteriorated for a given factor. For example, in the S&P 500, 104 companies increased their proportion of non-executive directors with tenure of less than 6 years, while 51 companies saw the percentage of such board members decline. As such, the S&P 500 universe experienced a net improvement in board refreshment of 53 companies since the beginning of the year.

Gender Diversity Takes the Cake

In the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom, gender diversity ranks consistently among the top factors that showed improvement since the beginning of the year. In the U.S., a net of 18 percent of Russell 3000 companies showed an increase in the proportion of women on the board. The trend can largely be attributed to an increasing number of asset managers and asset owners publicly declaring board diversity as a priority issue in their stewardship campaigns. In particular, 2017 marks the first year when all of the three largest U.S. asset managers put board gender diversity on top of their engagement agendas. SSGA adopted a voting policy in March, while Vanguard recently joined the U.S. Chapter of the 30% Club, and BlackRock identified gender diversity as one of its engagement priorities for 2017-2018. The trend will likely continue as more investors embrace gender diversity initiatives.

In Canada, the rate of change is even faster with a net improvement of 32 percent of TSX Composite companies showing an increase in the proportion of women on boards. The trend is driven in part by regulation and in part by investor initiatives, per the recent amendments to National Instrument 58-101 to include a Diversity Disclosure Requirement for TSX-listed companies. At the same time, the Canadian Coalition of Good Governance and several large individual asset owners and asset managers have adopted policies to promote gender diversity on boards.

In the United Kingdom, gender diversity ranked as the fourth most-improved factor this year. Gender diversity became a focus item in 2011, when the first target of 25% gender diverse boards for the FTSE 100 was set by the government-backed Lord Davies Women on Boards report. Since then, the objectives have evolved, with the most recent target set at women comprising one-third of FTSE 350 boards by 2020. As such, the trend in the UK market shows that board gender diversity is a long-term issue that will continue to develop as companies reevaluate their board composition priorities (often in response to investor initiatives and regulatory changes).

S&P 500 – Board Evaluations, Refreshment and Proxy Access

The highest-ranking improvement factor among S&P 500 companies is the disclosure of enhanced practices for annual board evaluation with a net 18% of companies disclosing an improvement. It is not clear whether companies are actively improving the board evaluation process or if this is merely an improvement in disclosure; either way, this is a welcome change, which will likely lead to more transparency and accountability on board structure. Gender diversity appears at both the second and fourth places on the list, with S&P 500 companies leading the way in the U.S. with bringing more women into the boardroom. As of today, 22.7% of all S&P 500 directorships are held by women. Not surprisingly, proxy access is third on the list due to continuing shareholder campaigns to introduce access rights. As of now, approximately 60 percent of S&P 500 companies have adopted proxy access. And finally, in line with the greater emphasis placed on board composition and board renewal in recent years, the proportion of non-executive directors with a tenure of less than six years is the fourth most improved governance factor.

Russell 3000 (ex S&P 500) – Following the Lead of Larger Companies

Governance improvements among smaller U.S. firms were similar to the trends observed in the S&P 500 index. Gender diversity, board refreshment and annual board performance evaluation are on the top four spots, confirming the proposition that best practices established by larger firms tend to trickle down to smaller firms. In addition, stock ownership requirements for CEOs made the top-five list in this segment of the market. Compensation improvements are widely dispersed but fairly common among top improvement factors below the top five for both large and small companies. Such practices include the adoption clawback provisions, vesting periods for stock options, anti-pledging policies and prohibitions of option cash buyouts.

Canada – Advancing on Multiple Governance Fronts

Gender diversity takes top honors in Canada, with strong increases in both the proportion and number of women serving on Canadian boards. Canadian investors have paid significant attention to overboarded directors in recent years, especially given the pervasiveness of a small network of interconnected boards in certain sectors. Greater engagement on the issue appears to lead to positive change, as fewer companies appear to have directors with overboarding concerns. Improved disclosure on performance metrics for short-term incentive plans corresponds with the recent trend of voluntary adoption of say-on-pay votes, which has driven better disclosure on compensation issues. Finally, fewer companies allow for the discretionary participation of non-employee directors in equity-based plans. This trend corresponds to investor expectations to limit such practices and to align director compensation with the long-term interests of shareholders.

United Kingdom – Compensation Leads the Way

In the United Kingdom, improvements to compensation practices dominate the landscape. This trend matches investors’ experience relative to meeting agendas, whereby much of the discussion focuses on the non-binding approval of the remuneration report and the binding proposal on remuneration policy. The most common compensation-related improvements suggest a strengthening of the link between executive compensation and the long-term interests of shareholders. Stock ownership requirements for executives and retention periods for restricted stock awards are meant to improve accountability and protect against short-termism in executive’s decision making. At the same time, better disclosure on performance metrics for short-term incentives aligns with the overall principle of pay-for-performance.

Australia – Fewer Overboarded Directors and Improved Incentive Structures

In Australia, the board-related practice of overboarding stands out as the most improved governance practice of the year. This trend is in line with investor expectations (also reflected in ISS’ most recent policy update) to limit the number of board positions held by directors, especially those in senior leadership such as the Chair of the Board or the CEO. The remaining factors are primarily compensation-related. An increase in the deferral of bonuses coincides with newly proposed rules for increased regulatory oversight of executive remuneration in the banking sector in light of a series of recent scandals. As such, bonus deferral policies may become the norm in future years.

Global Trends – A World of Change

The improvements discussed above are indicative of only some of the major trends observed globally. Overall, improved disclosure requirements and revised codes of best practice drive a sea-change in governance practices in both developed and emerging markets in Europe, Asia and Latin America. In addition, company disclosures on environmental and social issues improve, as corporations, investors and regulators explore better ways to assess the potential risks related to ESG factors. We will monitor changes in governance practices in the future, as policy priorities are bound to evolve further.

Gouvernance des sociétés d’État | une étude montre des problèmes dans la moitié d’entre elles

Yvan Allaire, président exécutif du conseil de l’Institut sur la gouvernance (IGOPP) vient de publier, en collaboration avec François Dauphin, un nouveau document de recherche intitulé « Nos sociétés d’État sont-elles bien gouvernées ? » lequel a fait l’objet d’une analyse succincte par le journaliste Gérald Fillion de la Société Radio-Canada.

Selon l’IGOPP, « les contribuables s’attendent à ce que ces sociétés fassent bon usage des fonds publics qui leur sont confiés, que leur gestion soit efficace, efficiente et transparente, que leur mandat soit clair et pertinent. Leur conseil d’administration, s’appuyant sur des règles et principes de saine gouvernance, devrait jouer un rôle essentiel à cet égard ».

Je crois que ce rapport de recherche saura intéresser les spécialistes de la gouvernance qui œuvrent dans les sociétés d’État et dans les autres organisations parapubliques. Personnellement, je crois que les auteurs ont élaboré une méthodologie de recherche tout à fait pertinente pour évaluer la bonne gouvernance, non seulement des sociétés d’État, mais également de tous les types d’organisation.

Vous trouverez ci-dessous une analyse de Gérald Filion, suivie de la référence au document de recherche de l’IGOPP.

Sur 46 sociétés d’État au Québec seulement 23 obtiennent la note de passage en matière de gouvernance, selon une étude préparée par les chercheurs Yvan Allaire et François Dauphin.

Si les grandes sociétés se démarquent, notamment la Caisse de dépôt, la SAQ et Loto-Québec, d’autres affichent de faibles résultats qui pourraient amener le gouvernement à devoir repenser leur modèle de gouvernance. Parmi les derniers de classe, on compte l’École nationale de police, le Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec et l’Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec.

Ce rapport, publié jeudi par l’Institut sur la gouvernance d’entreprises publiques et privées, s’intéresse à 47 instruments de mesure de la gouvernance des sociétés pour établir un pointage sur 100. La note de passage est établie à 60. Ont été exclues de l’étude 13 sociétés jugées inactives dans les faits ou trop petites. Les 46 sociétés d’État retenues encaissent annuellement des revenus de 63 milliards de dollars et comptent 65 000 employés.

L’Institut sur la gouvernance évalue les sociétés sur les compétences des administrateurs, la transparence, la reddition de compte, la structure du conseil et le déroulement des séances du conseil. Et les résultats sont très inégaux.

L’École nationale de police échoue sur tous les plans, tout particulièrement sur les questions de compétence et de nomination. À l’autre bout du spectre, la Société d’habitation du Québec se démarque à tous les niveaux, avec une note parfaite dans la composition et la structure de son conseil, qui touche surtout à la question de l’indépendance.

L’Institut recommande au gouvernement de revoir certaines lois jugées « désuètes » pour encadrer les sociétés, de rendre publics les profils d’expertise et d’expérience des administrateurs et une foule d’informations pertinentes à leur propos.

Il propose aussi que le gouvernement cesse de rendre le dépôt du rapport annuel des sociétés d’État obligatoire à l’Assemblée nationale avant de le rendre public. Les rapports doivent être disponibles dans des délais plus rapides selon l’Institut sur la gouvernance. Actuellement, il faut attendre 6 mois en moyenne après la fin de l’exercice pour avoir accès au rapport annuel.

Les conseils d’administration des sociétés d’État, écrivent les chercheurs, doivent adopter des principes qui dépassent les exigences de la loi, surtout au chapitre de la « divulgation des profils de compétence, divulgation non obligatoire, mais non prohibée. »

Les conseils doivent s’assurer également que l’information, sur les sites internet des sociétés d’État, est facilement accessible, notamment les résultats de la société, ses stratégies ainsi que les indicateurs de performance. De plus, « une divulgation exhaustive des éléments de rémunération des hauts dirigeants est incontournable. »

Le gouvernement se mêle de tout

L’Institut illustre, chiffres à l’appui, combien le gouvernement s’assure de garder le contrôle sur les nominations des administrateurs.

« Ainsi, écrivent Yvan Allaire et François Dauphin, dans seulement cinq cas avons-nous trouvé une participation claire de la part du conseil dans le processus de sélection des candidats et candidates au poste d’administrateur. Bien sûr, le manque de transparence fausse peut-être en partie les données pour cet élément. Néanmoins, la participation du conseil dans le processus de sélection est extrêmement importante pour assurer non seulement la présence de compétences et d’expériences complémentaires au groupe, mais aussi pour faciliter l’obtention (ou le maintien) d’une dynamique de groupe fonctionnelle. »

Sur les 46 sociétés d’État, seulement trois établissent publiquement sur leur site un lien entre la biographie des administrateurs et les compétences recherchées au conseil.

L’Institut sur la gouvernance est d’avis également qu’une personne ne devrait pas siéger à plus de cinq conseils d’administration en même temps. Or, « au moins quinze (32,6 %) des sociétés comptaient au minimum un membre du conseil siégeant sur plus de cinq conseils d’administration, incluant quelques présidents de conseil. »

Aussi, « 19 sociétés (41,3 %) ne fournissent pas l’information sur l’assiduité des membres aux réunions du conseil. »

Les auteurs constatent également qu’il y a « une différence importante entre les organisations assujetties à la Loi québécoise sur la gouvernance des sociétés d’État promulguée en 2006 et celles qui ne le sont pas. En effet, les sociétés assujetties doivent divulguer davantage d’information, ne serait-ce que pour s’y conformer. Aussi, elles ont en moyenne une note de 70,7, comparativement à 45,2 pour les sociétés qui ne se conforment qu’aux exigences de leurs lois respectives. »

Manque de transparence

C’est pas moins de dix sociétés sur les 46 qui n’ont pas d’indicateur de performance ou de cible pour les évaluer, ou qui ne publient pas leur plan stratégique. Ce manque de transparence touche notamment la Commission de la capitale nationale, Héma-Québec et la Société de la Place des Arts de Montréal.

Yvan Allaire et François Daupin affirment également que « la transparence quant à la rémunération des hauts dirigeants des sociétés d’État peut et devrait être grandement améliorée, ne serait-ce que pour se rapprocher des exigences imposées aux sociétés pourtant dites “privées”.»

Enfin, les auteurs invitent les sociétés d’État à rendre publics la teneur des formations offertes aux administrateurs et les processus d’évaluation des membres du conseil. Cela dit, près du quart des sociétés d’État ne font pas d’évaluation et ne dévoilent pas cette information.

Je vous invite à lire l’ensemble du document sur le site de l’IGOPP, notamment pour connaître les 47 critères de mesure de la gouvernance.

Bonne lecture ! Vos commentaires sont les bienvenus.

Nos sociétés d’État sont-elles bien gouvernées? | L’IGOPP leur attribue des notes de gouvernance

Six mesures pour améliorer la gouvernance des organismes publics au Québec | Yvan Allaire

Je suis tout à fait d’accord avec la teneur de l’article de l’IGOPP, publié par Yvan Allaire* intitulé « Six mesures pour améliorer la gouvernance des organismes publics au Québec », lequel dresse un état des lieux qui soulève des défis considérables pour l’amélioration de la gouvernance dans le secteur public et propose des mesures qui pourraient s’avérer utiles. Celui-ci fut a été soumis au journal Le Devoir, pour publication.

L’article soulève plusieurs arguments pour des conseils d’administration responsables, compétents, légitimes et crédibles aux yeux des ministres responsables.

Même si la Loi sur la gouvernance des sociétés d’État a mis en place certaines dispositions qui balisent adéquatement les responsabilités des C.A., celles-ci sont poreuses et n’accordent pas l’autonomie nécessaire au conseil d’administration, et à son président, pour effectuer une véritable veille sur la gestion de ces organismes.

Selon l’auteur, les ministres contournent allègrement les C.A., et ne les consultent pas. La réalité politique amène les ministres responsables à ne prendre principalement avis que du PDG ou du président du conseil : deux postes qui sont sous le contrôle et l’influence du ministère du conseil exécutif ainsi que des ministres responsables des sociétés d’État (qui ont trop souvent des mandats écourtés !).

Rappelons, en toile de fond à l’article, certaines dispositions de la loi :

– Au moins les deux tiers des membres du conseil d’administration, dont le président, doivent, de l’avis du gouvernement, se qualifier comme administrateurs indépendants.

– Le mandat des membres du conseil d’administration peut être renouvelé deux fois

– Le conseil d’administration doit constituer les comités suivants, lesquels ne doivent être composés que de membres indépendants :

1 ° un comité de gouvernance et d’éthique ;

2 ° un comité d’audit ;

3 ° un comité des ressources humaines.

– Les fonctions de président du conseil d’administration et de président-directeur général de la société ne peuvent être cumulées.

– Le ministre peut donner des directives sur l’orientation et les objectifs généraux qu’une société doit poursuivre.

– Les conseils d’administration doivent, pour l’ensemble des sociétés, être constitués à parts égales de femmes et d’hommes.

Yvan a accepté d’agir en tant qu’auteur invité dans mon blogue en gouvernance. Voici donc son article.

Six mesures pour améliorer la gouvernance des organismes publics au Québec

par Yvan Allaire*

La récente controverse à propos de la Société immobilière du Québec a fait constater derechef que, malgré des progrès certains, les espoirs investis dans une meilleure gouvernance des organismes publics se sont dissipés graduellement. Ce n’est pas tellement les crises récurrentes survenant dans des organismes ou sociétés d’État qui font problème. Ces phénomènes sont inévitables même avec une gouvernance exemplaire comme cela fut démontré à maintes reprises dans les sociétés cotées en Bourse. Non, ce qui est remarquable, c’est l’acceptation des limites inhérentes à la gouvernance dans le secteur public selon le modèle actuel.

En fait, propriété de l’État, les organismes publics ne jouissent pas de l’autonomie qui permettrait à leur conseil d’administration d’assumer les responsabilités essentielles qui incombent à un conseil d’administration normal : la nomination du PDG par le conseil (sauf pour la Caisse de dépôt et placement, et même pour celle-ci, la nomination du PDG par le conseil est assujettie au veto du gouvernement), l’établissement de la rémunération des dirigeants par le conseil, l’élection des membres du conseil par les « actionnaires » sur proposition du conseil, le conseil comme interlocuteur auprès des actionnaires.

Ainsi, le C.A. d’un organisme public, dépouillé des responsabilités qui donnent à un conseil sa légitimité auprès de la direction, entouré d’un appareil gouvernemental en communication constante avec le PDG, ne peut que difficilement affirmer son autorité sur la direction et décider vraiment des orientations stratégiques de l’organisme.

Pourtant, l’engouement pour la « bonne » gouvernance, inspirée par les pratiques de gouvernance mises en place dans les sociétés ouvertes cotées en Bourse, s’était vite propagé dans le secteur public. Dans un cas comme dans l’autre, la notion d’indépendance des membres du conseil a pris un caractère mythique, un véritable sine qua non de la « bonne » gouvernance. Or, à l’épreuve, on a vite constaté que l’indépendance qui compte est celle de l’esprit, ce qui ne se mesure pas, et que l’indépendance qui se mesure est sans grand intérêt et peut, en fait, s’accompagner d’une dangereuse ignorance des particularités de l’organisme à gouverner.

Ce constat des limites des conseils d’administration que font les ministres et les ministères devrait les inciter à modifier ce modèle de gouvernance, à procéder à une sélection plus serrée des membres de conseil, à prévoir une formation plus poussée des membres de C.A. sur les aspects substantifs de l’organisme dont ils doivent assumer la gouvernance.

Or, l’État manifeste plutôt une indifférence courtoise, parfois une certaine hostilité, envers les conseils et leurs membres que l’on estime ignorants des vrais enjeux et superflus pour les décisions importantes.

Évidemment, le caractère politique de ces organismes exacerbe ces tendances. Dès qu’un organisme quelconque de l’État met le gouvernement dans l’embarras pour quelque faute ou erreur, les partis d’opposition sautent sur l’occasion, et les médias aidant, le gouvernement est pressé d’agir pour que le « scandale » s’estompe, que la « crise » soit réglée au plus vite. Alors, les ministres concernés deviennent préoccupés surtout de leur contrôle sur ce qui se fait dans tous les organismes sous leur responsabilité, même si cela est au détriment d’une saine gouvernance.

Ce brutal constat fait que le gouvernement, les ministères et ministres responsables contournent les conseils d’administration, les consultent rarement, semblent considérer cette agitation de gouvernance comme une obligation juridique, un mécanisme pro-forma utile qu’en cas de blâme à partager.

Prenant en compte ces réalités qui leur semblent incontournables, les membres des conseils d’organismes publics, bénévoles pour la plupart, se concentrent alors sur les enjeux pour lesquels ils exercent encore une certaine influence, se réjouissent d’avoir cette occasion d’apprentissage et apprécient la notoriété que leur apporte dans leur milieu ce rôle d’administrateur.

Cet état des lieux, s’il est justement décrit, soulève des défis considérables pour l’amélioration de la gouvernance dans le secteur public. Les mesures suivantes pourraient s’avérer utiles :

Relever considérablement la formation donnée aux membres de conseil en ce qui concerne les particularités de fonctionnement de l’organisme, ses enjeux, ses défis et critères de succès. Cette formation doit aller bien au-delà des cours en gouvernance qui sont devenus quasi-obligatoires. Sans une formation sur la substance de l’organisme, un nouveau membre de conseil devient une sorte de touriste pendant un temps assez long avant de comprendre suffisamment le caractère de l’organisation et son fonctionnement.
Accorder aux conseils d’administration un rôle élargi pour la nomination du PDG de l’organisme ; par exemple, le conseil pourrait, après recherche de candidatures et évaluation de celles-ci, recommander au gouvernement deux candidats pour le choix éventuel du gouvernement. Le conseil serait également autorisé à démettre un PDG de ses fonctions, après consultation du gouvernement.
De même, le gouvernement devrait élargir le bassin de candidats et candidates pour les conseils d’administration, recevoir l’avis du conseil sur le profil recherché.
Une rémunération adéquate devrait être versée aux membres de conseil ; le bénévolat en ce domaine prive souvent les organismes de l’État du talent essentiel au succès de la gouvernance.
Rendre publique la grille de compétences pour les membres du conseil dont doivent se doter la plupart des organismes publics ; fournir une information détaillée sur l’expérience des membres du conseil et rapprocher l’expérience/expertise de chacun de la grille de compétences établie. Cette information devrait apparaître sur le site Web de l’organisme.
Au risque de trahir une incorrigible naïveté, je crois que l’on pourrait en arriver à ce que les problèmes qui surgissent inévitablement dans l’un ou l’autre organisme public soient pris en charge par le conseil d’administration et la direction de l’organisme. En d’autres mots, en réponse aux questions des partis d’opposition et des médias, le ministre responsable indique que le président du conseil de l’organisme en cause et son PDG tiendront incessamment une conférence de presse pour expliquer la situation et présenter les mesures prises pour la corriger. Si leur intervention semble insuffisante, alors le ministre prend en main le dossier et en répond devant l’opinion publique.

_______________________________________________

*Yvan Allaire, Ph. D. (MIT), MSRC Président exécutif du conseil, IGOPP Professeur émérite de stratégie, UQÀM

Taille du CA, limite d’âge et durée des mandats des administrateurs | En reprise

Comme je l’ai déjà évoqué dans plusieurs autres billets, il faut réfléchir très sérieusement à la taille du CA, à la limite d’âge des administrateurs ainsi qu’à la durée de leurs mandats.

Eu égard à la taille du CA, on note que les membres de conseils de petite taille :

(1) sont plus engagés dans les affaires de l’entité

(2) sont plus portés à aller en profondeur dans l’analyse stratégique

(3) entretiennent des relations plus fréquentes et plus harmonieuses avec la direction

(4) ont plus de possibilités de communiquer entre eux

(5) exercent une surveillance plus étroite des activités de la direction

(6) sont plus décisifs, cohésif et impliqués.

On constate également une tendance lourde en ce qui regarde le nombre de mandats des administrateurs de sociétés, mais que ce changement ne se fait pas sans heurt.

Plusieurs pensent que, malgré certains avantages évidents à avoir des administrateurs séniors sur les CA, cette situation est un frein à la diversité et au renouvellement des générations au sein des conseils d’administration. Je crois que les CA devraient se doter d’une politique de limite d’âge pour les administrateurs ainsi que d’une limite au cumul des mandats ?

Les conseils d’administration devraient se préoccuper de ces questions afin :

(1) d’accroître la diversité dans la composition du conseil

(2) de faciliter la nomination de femmes au sein des CA

(3) d’assurer une plus grande indépendance des membres du conseil

(4) d’assurer la relève et l’apport d’idées neuves sur la gouvernance et les stratégies

(5) d’éviter que des administrateurs peu engagés s’incrustent dans leurs postes.

À cet égard, voici certains extraits d’études qui présentent les changements au Canada en 2015 :

Cumul des mandats d’administrateur

« Dorénavant, un administrateur qui est chef de la direction est considéré comme cumulant trop de mandats s’il siège au conseil de plus d’une société ouverte en plus du conseil d’administration de la société qui l’emploie (auparavant, il fallait que ce soit plus de deux sociétés). Un administrateur qui n’est pas chef de la direction cumule trop de mandats lorsqu’il siège à plus de quatre conseils d’administration de sociétés ouvertes (auparavant, c’était plus de six sociétés) ».

Renouvellement des conseils d’administration

Les Autorités canadiennes en valeurs mobilières (ACVM) ont révélé que « seulement 19 % des émetteurs examinés avaient adopté une combinaison quelconque de limites à la durée des mandats et/ou de limite d’âge… Toutefois, la grande majorité des émetteurs ne se sont dotés d’aucun mécanisme officiel pour le renouvellement du conseil, à part leur processus d’évaluation des administrateurs ».

Notons que les émetteurs assujettis sont tenus de divulguer les limites à la durée du mandat des administrateurs ainsi que les mécanismes de renouvellement du conseil. S’ils ne se conforment pas, ils doivent en expliquer les raisons.

En France, par exemple, un administrateur qui a siégé à un conseil pendant plus de 12 ans n’est plus considéré comme étant indépendant. Au Royaume-Uni, le conseil doit déclarer publiquement pourquoi il croit qu’un administrateur qui a siégé plus de 9 ans est toujours considéré comme étant indépendant.

Beaucoup de conseils au Canada estiment que les limites de mandat servent un objectif, 56 % des sociétés du Canadian Spencer Stuart Board Index (CSSBI) indiquant qu’elles recourent volontairement à des limites d’âge et de mandat. Selon une récente étude de Korn Ferry International/Patrick O’Callaghan and Associates, les limites de mandat pour les entreprises canadiennes inscrites en bourse ayant été sondées oscillent entre sept et vingt ans, 53 % d’entre elles présentant une limite de mandat de 15 ans.

Voici quelques billets publiés sur mon blogue qui peuvent être utiles à un président de conseil aux prises avec ces questions délicates.

Le premier, Company directors getting older – fewer age limits, a été publié par Andrew Frye et Jeff Green dans le San Francisco Chronicle. Le second, Board Tenure: The New Hot Governance Topic ?, a été publié par Broc Romanek sur le blogue de CorporateCounsel.net. Vous trouverez, ci-dessous, des extraits de ces deux références.

Company directors getting older – fewer age limits

Buffett’s influence

Berkshire’s willingness to retain directors in their ninth decades reflects Buffett’s influence on the firm and a national trend toward older boards. About 15 percent of directors at companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index are older than 69, compared with 9.8 percent in 2002, according to executive-compensation benchmarking firm Equilar. Proxy filings show 52 directors are age 80 or older.

« You can have great 85-year-olds and horrible 55-year-olds, » said Anne Sheehan, director of corporate governance for the $155 billion California State Teachers’ Retirement System. « A lot of this depends on the 80-year-old, because I’d love to have Warren Buffett on any board. »

Boardroom age limits are less prevalent and set higher than they were five years ago, according to the latest report on director trends by executive recruitment company Spencer Stuart. Companies use age limits to promote turnover and assure investors that management is getting new ideas. Those goals may instead be achieved through term limits, Sheehan said.

« You have to refresh the board, whether it’s through term limits or through age limits, » said Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware’s Center for Corporate Governance.

_______________________________________________________

Board Tenure: The New Hot Governance Topic ?

At a recent event, a member joked with me that his CEO was asked: « What was the average age of directors on his board? » – and the CEO answered: « Dead. » Based on recent stats, it appears that many directors are comfortable as turnover is quite low these days. This is reflected in Jim Kristie’s Directors & Boards piece entitled « Troubling Trend: Low Board Turnover. » As Jim points out, a director with a certain background might make sense for the company now – but might not ten years down the road as the circumstances change.

Perhaps even more important is the independence issue – is a director who sits on the board for several decades likely to still be independent after such a long tenure (see this WSJ article about the 40-year club)? Does it matter if management turns over during the director’s tenure? And if so, how much? These are issues that are being debated. What is your take?

As blogged by Davis Polk’s Ning Chiu, CII is considering policy changes linking director tenure with director independence, under which it would ask boards to consider a director’s years of service in determining director independence. According to the proposed policy, 26% of all Russell 3,000 directors have served more than 10 years and 14% have served more than 15 years. CII would not advocate for any specific tenure, unlike the European Commission, which advises that non-executive directors serve no more than 12 years. Note that under the UK’s « comply or explain » framework, companies need to disclose why a director continues to serve after being on the board nine years. I have heard that seven years is the bar in Russia.

How Does Low Board Turnover Impact Board Diversity?

Related to proper board composition is the issue of whether low board turnover is just one more factor that stifles board diversity. As well documented in numerous studies (see our « Board Diversity » Practice Area), gender diversity on boards has essentially flat-lined over the past decade – and actually has regressed in some areas. This is a real-world problem as it’s been proven that differing views on a board lead to greater corporate performance. To get boards back on track, I do think bold ideas need to be implemented – and plenty are out there, such as this one. I can’t believe that more investors haven’t been clamoring for greater diversity – but I do believe that day is near…

Bonne lecture !

Partagez (share) ce post

Partagez (share) ce post

Partagez (share) ce post

Partagez (share) ce post

Part 1. Perceptions of board diversity

Boards agree on the need for diversity

Board members see diversity as going beyond basic demographics

Leaders overwhelmingly perceive benefits in diversity

…Yet relatively few see a lack of diversity as a top problem

Part 2. Recruitment and evaluation practices

Boards still rely on traditional candidate criteria

About half of organizations have processes focused on diverse skills and disruptive views

Policies affecting board refreshment

Current practices tend to limit diversity

Part 3. A path forward—The Mixtocracy Model

Rethink risk

Elevate diversity

Retool board composition

Revitalize succession planning

Toward greater board diversity

Endnotes

Partagez (share) ce post

1. Cybersecurity threats.

2. Corporate social responsibility.

3. Managing five generations of employees.

4. Corporate strategy.

5. Board composition.

6. Shareholder activism.

7. Internal investigations.

8. SEC regulatory relief.

9. SEC enforcement.

10. Trade and sanctions.

Special Bonus: Tax reform.

Partagez (share) ce post

Significant Findings

Complete Coverage

Endnotes

Partagez (share) ce post

Partagez (share) ce post

Partagez (share) ce post

10 ways boards can continue to evolve

Partagez (share) ce post

1. It’s Time to Diversify

2. Beware of CEO “Bloodlust”

3. Let’s Go Global

4. Don’t Go Overboard

5. Sweat the Mechanics

Partagez (share) ce post

Executive summary

Partagez (share) ce post

Partagez (share) ce post

Partagez (share) ce post

Introduction

Expanded Stakeholders

Sustainability

Promoting a Long-Term Perspective

Board Composition

Activism

Spotlight on Boards

Partagez (share) ce post

Partagez (share) ce post

Gender Diversity Takes the Cake

S&P 500 – Board Evaluations, Refreshment and Proxy Access

Russell 3000 (ex S&P 500) – Following the Lead of Larger Companies

Canada – Advancing on Multiple Governance Fronts

United Kingdom – Compensation Leads the Way

Australia – Fewer Overboarded Directors and Improved Incentive Structures

Global Trends – A World of Change

Partagez (share) ce post

Partagez (share) ce post

Six mesures pour améliorer la gouvernance des organismes publics au Québec

Partagez (share) ce post

Company directors getting older – fewer age limits

Board Tenure: The New Hot Governance Topic ?

Partagez (share) ce post