Montreal, April 28, 2022 — François Dauphin, President and CEO of the Institute for governance (IGOPP) is pleased to announce that Mtre Patric Besner has been appointed the Institute’s Vice-president. This strategic addition to IGOPP’s management will provide support to all of the Institute’s multidisciplinary activities and contribute significantly to the strategic diversification of training […]

Shopify Inc. co-founder, chair and chief executive Tobias Lutke has three young children. The billionaire is willing to give up the opportunity to pass along the company to his offspring in exchange for maintaining control for as long he works at the online commerce giant. Ottawa-based Shopify, Canada’s largest tech company, announced on Monday it plans […]

n will set this week on the special voting rights held by the four founders of Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., leaving the Canadian convenience store giant more exposed to investor pressure than ever before. Its fate will be closely watched by both critics and defenders of dual class share structures. Laval, Que.-based Couche-Tard is one of […]

A recent boardroom clash at Rogers Communications Inc. has revealed the governance risk associated with dual-class share companies, but experts say businesses with that structure can be hard to avoid for investors because they’re big profit generators. Companies with dual-class shares issue different sets of common shares that have different voting and control rights. This […]

Michael Rousseau’s first speech to business leaders in Montreal was supposed to be his coming out party, a chance for Air Canada new chief executive to build credibility and tell the story of an airline – a pillar of the Quebec economy – in recovery mode. Instead, the CEO’s English-only talk, during which he revealed that […]

Canadian investor organizations want stricter requirements for companies with dual-class stocks to trade on public exchanges amid a growing debate about the drawbacks of such shares and a controversy over voting rights at Rogers Communications Inc. Dual-class stock structuring – where different classes of shares in a single company have different voting rights – has […]

Montreal, November 18, 2020—As part of its biennial celebration of the Great builders of the Quebec economy, the IGOPP has named Louis Audet, Executive Chair of the Board of Cogeco, and Madeleine Paquin, President and CEO of LOGISTIC, as the laureates of its sixth edition. Since this initiative was launched in 2010, the IGOPP has […]

Montreal, November 12, 2020—Yvan Allaire, Chair of the Board of the Institute for Governance (IGOPP), is pleased to announce the appointment of Louis Audet and Isabelle Marcoux, respectively Executive Chair of the Board of Cogeco Inc. and Chair of the Board of Transcontinental Inc., to the IGOPP’s Board. Mr. Allaire emphasized Mr. Audet and Ms. […]

We take you back to early September and a brief review of the 24-hour Quebec Inc. torpedo of a proposed takeover of the Montreal-based Cogeco telecom companies — 24 hours that highlight investor, governance and competition issues. In the early evening of Tuesday, Sept. 1, Dexter Goei, CEO of the New York-based broadband company Altice […]

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. will let the sun set on the special voting rights held by its four founders. Executive chairman Alain Bouchard says that he and the three other men who built the Canadian convenience-store empire will let their 25-year-old special stock rights, which give them control over the company, expire next year as scheduled […]

The move by Rogers Communications Inc. and Altice USA to launch a hostile takeover bid for Cogeco Communications Inc. and parent Cogeco Inc. without the support of the Quebec companies’ controlling shareholder looks like a long-shot gamble to many experts. But they say similar past deals for family-controlled companies show there can be a path to victory […]

To mark its 15th anniversary, the Institute for Governance (IGOPP) in partnership with the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD-Quebec chapter) is pleased to announce a virtual conference on The “Purpose” of a Corporation and the shift towards stakeholder governance and ESG with Martin Lipton, foremost authority on corporate law and governance issues and co-founder of […]

Chairman of the Institute for Governance Yvan Allaire says that the blunt response from Louis Audet suggests the family that owns Cogeco might not be open to negotiating a selling price. To access the interview with M. Allaire, please click here.

In his article published on July 3, 2020 by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance Some Thoughts for Boards of Directors in 2020: A Mid-Year Update, Martin Lipton, a prominent New Yorker from the Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, referred to IGOPP’s research on Governance and stakeholders co-written by the professors Yvan Allaire […]

The past six months have been marked by a profound upheaval that has accelerated the growing focus on both the purpose of the corporation and the role of the board in overseeing and leading the corporation in ways that promote sustainable business success. For a number of years, there has been a growing sense of […]

Montreal, May 21, 2020 – The board of directors of the Institute for governance (IGOPP) is pleased to announce that François Dauphin has been appointed president and CEO and director of IGOPP, effective June 1, 2020. He will succeed Michel Nadeau, who has been IGOPP’s Director General since it was created in 2005. Professor Yvan […]