Topic Results: Stakeholders

December 29, 2022

Companies should disclose board members’ spoken languages to investors, Quebec group Médac says

A leading investors’ rights group in Quebec is pressing publicly traded Canadian companies to reveal what languages their board members speak, saying the disclosure is needed to ensure rising expectations for corporate diversity are being met. The call comes from Montreal-based Mouvement d’éducation et de défense des actionnaires, known as Médac. The group says the […]

November 5, 2021

Language office eyes probe after Air Canada English-only speech

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 […]

November 17, 2020

Corporate Purpose, ESG, stakeholders: what’s the deal?

Since the publication in 1932 of Berle and Means’ The Modern Corporation and Private Property, “capitalist” societies have been engaged in a forlorn quest for an appropriate definition of the role, justification and “raison d’être” of large corporations. Except for the legal fiction of shareholders as owners, corporations of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, were […]

September 30, 2020

The ”Purpose” of a Corporation

You have missed our virtual event on ” The Purpose of a Corporation and the Stakeholder Model ” with the renowned lawyer from New York,  Martin Lipton, founding partner of the prominent law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz  ? With the attendance of more than 300 participants, this conference, organised in partnership with ICD, tackled multiple governance […]

August 9, 2020

The Age of ESG: new issues for corporate governance ?

For 40 years or so, corporations listed on stock markets were expected to pursue diligently, if not exclusively, value creation for their shareholders. A number of factors had pushed corporations away from an earlier “stakeholder model,” prime among them the revolution in executive compensation. Then, in the new century, a perennial criticism of business corporations […]

July 6, 2020

IGOPP’s research on Stakeholders quoted in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance

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 […]

July 2, 2020

Some Thoughts for Boards of Directors in 2020: A Mid-Year Update

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 […]

May 1, 2020

Corporate Governance in the post-pandemic world

Human beings are wonderful amnesiacs, an observation grounded in the history of traumatic events which have faded gradually into oblivion. That may well be the case with the current pandemic. For instance, how did societies, corporations and their governance system cope with recent dramatic events (so called “Black Swans” or for the more statistically inclined […]

December 13, 2019

Limiting the damage of short-sellers

When any individual investor or fund comes to the conclusion after careful analysis that a company is over-valued, it may very well sell short the shares of that company. Fair enough. If the analysis proves right, facts on the ground will confirm it eventually and the stock price will drop. But that’s not the game plan […]

September 20, 2019

The Business Roundtable on “The Purpose of a Corporation” Back to the future!

In September 2019, CEOs of large U.S. corporations have embraced with suspect enthusiasm the notion that a corporation’s purpose is broader than merely “creating shareholder value”. Why now after 30 years of obedience to the dogma of shareholder primacy and servile (but highly paid) attendance to the whims and wants of investment funds? Simply put, […]

September 20, 2019

From Amazon to the Financial Times and Trudeau, the big push is underway to ‘reset’ capitalism

The old pink lady of Fleet Street made history of sorts this week, donning a yellow front page that contained a five-word declaration that it was pursuing a New Agenda. Despite its reputation and self-declared role as a defender of free markets, the Financial Times of London has frequently flirted with assorted compromises. But nothing […]

March 21, 2019

What was the story behind SNC-Lavalin’s supposedly ‘excellent’ corporate governance regime?

Excerpted and translated from “Le fiasco SNC-Lavalin: crime, culture, governance?” by Yvan Allaire, executive chairman of the Institute for Governance of Private and Public Organizations, published in Policy Options March 18, 2019.  The tragedy of SNC-Lavalin was in the making between 2000 and 2012. To outside observers, these were years of quiet profitability for the […]

February 14, 2019

Why Quebec sees SNC-Lavalin as an asset, not a liability

In Ottawa, there appears to be little sympathy these days for SNC-Lavalin, the giant engineering corporation facing prosecution for bribery schemes in Libya. The company was hoping to strike a deal with federal prosecutors in order to avoid a trial. If guilty, it would be cut off from lucrative Canadian government contracts for a decade. […]

February 14, 2019

‘It’s sad’ no one asked questions while SNC profits soared: Ex-Caisse exec

The long series of scandals ensnaring SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.  has one former executive of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec calling for more accountability when it comes to corporate bribes for global contracts. Michel Nadeau, a former deputy chief executive of Caisse – the largest shareholder in SNC – told BNN Bloomberg on […]

April 5, 2018

It’s hunting season, as activists and regulators open fire on Canada’s businesses

The corporate hunting season is officially underway, an annual ritual during which shareholder parties, armed with proxies and other weapons of democratic destruction, set out to bag executives and directors for failing to deliver. The list of potential corporate failings is all encompassing. Anything and everything is a target, from executive compensation to diversity policies […]

March 9, 2018

Sharing the spoils of legalized cannabis

Statistics Canada estimates that, in 2017, “4.9 million Canadians aged 15 to 64 spent an estimated $5.7 billion on cannabis for medical (10% of the market) and non-medical (90% of the market) purposes. This was equivalent to around $1,200 per cannabis consumer.” Private companies, several of them listed on the stock exchange and already supplying […]