“[…] As the argument goes, SNC-Lavalin is too big to fail. That line of reasoning saved American banks when they created a housing bubble only to have it burst in their face. It also sparked the multi-billion-dollar bailout of North American car companies when the global economy tanked. “There are hundreds if not thousands of professionals […]

“Half of Quebec’s 50 biggest publicly traded companies are vulnerable to foreign takeover attempts, new research suggests. It’s a statistical call to arms from a leading corporate expert who argues Quebec is doing the right thing in taking national ownership of the “say no” fight after Ontario ignored it for years. Yvan Allaire, a former […]

In the U.S. when the board says no to a would-be acquisitor, the matter is largely settled. English-Canadian media are in a tizzy. The Quebec government wants to block the takeover of Rona by the American Lowe’s Cos. Inc. Nationalistic impudence, misguided tampering with financial markets, jingoistic economic policies — the salvo of epithets has […]

“An influential group including representatives of Canada’s business, regulatory and academic circles is calling for an end to the “mistake” of rewarding executives with stock options. The Institute for the Governance of Private and Public Organizations issued the bold challenge Tuesday as part of package of recommendations aimed at reining in executive pay and tying […]

At a time when the political and financial elite gathered at Davos frets about the failures of capitalism and the need for its reform, Professors Yvan Allaire and Mihaela Firsirotu, in a new book titled “A Capitalism of Owners “, propose an action plan to change fundamentally the way capitalism has come to work. We must bring back […]

In a profanity-laden interview with Terence Corcoran of the National Post (January 6th 2011), Professor Michael Jensen rejects the accusation in Roger Martin’s latest book that he is the spiritual father of the shareholder-value maximization movement. True enough; in the seminal Jensen-Meckling article of 1976 that Martin singles out as the source of this abomination, […]

According to IGOPP, the proposed Business Corporations Act (Bill 63) is a quantum leap in the right direction. It modernize and clarify some dsyfunctionnal aspaects of our business laws and legal system. Furthermore, Bill 63 introduce some useful innovations. Howewer, some modifications to the Bill would improve the chances of Québec to become a destination […]

At a time when several Canadian financial institutions are about to hold a non-binding shareholder vote on executive compensation, the Institute for Governance of Private and Public Organizations (IGPPO) states in a position paper made public  that this process should not be imposed on all publicly traded companies. “The arguments pros and cons a non-binding […]

Agenda of Presentation: Preliminary remarks Hedge Funds Private Equity Funds Policy Implications

On May 7, 2007, Alcoa launched a bid to take over Alcan. It is qualified as “hostile” takeover bid because no previous arrangements had been made with the Alcan board of directors in this regard. This event, which follows on the heels of several other takeovers of Canadian businesses by foreign interests in recent months, […]

In this age of momentum investors, day traders and hedge funds, the practice of granting transient “investors” the full and immediate rights of corporate citizenship, including the right to vote, is questionable and should be questioned. The democratic equivalent to this practice would consist of granting the right to vote to anyone who happens to […]