Salle de presse

La loi Dodd-Frank, dans les faits

Fair Game

When Shareholders Make Their Voices Heard

April 7, 2012
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON, The New York Times

Executive pay, that is — something that, in investing circles, can be more irritating than April pollen.

The figures, disclosed in corporate proxy statements this time of year, are often maddening. Many corporate boards talk a good line about paying for performance. Then they turn around and award fat paychecks to chief executives who, by many measures, don’t deserve them.

But this year, this rite of spring has an extra kick. We are starting to see something that, for the most part, we haven’t before : evidence that shareholders — the people who actually own public companies — are gaining some influence over corporate pay practices.

These straws in the wind appear as a result of the Dodd-Frank law. Rules mandated by the law require companies to put their pay practices to a shareholder vote at least every three years.

Admittedly, these votes aren’t binding — which means that boards can choose to ignore them. But the say-on-pay rules went into effect in 2011, so this year’s crop of corporate proxies provides the first real glimpse into how companies are, or aren’t, responding when their shareholders express displeasure over C.E.O. pay.

The early indications are positive : some companies seem to be listening. That’s a refreshing change, particularly given how corporate America has pushed back on other aspects of the Dodd-Frank legislation.

Granted, shareholders have to get pretty angry, or at least organized, before companies respond. Pay experts generally consider it a sign that shareholders are deeply unhappy when at least 20 percent vote against a company’s pay practices. The good news is that some companies in this category have responded with changes that they hope will calm restive shareholders.

Consider what happened at Stanley Black & Decker. Last year, fully 48 percent of the shares voted at the annual meeting objected to its pay practices.

Management seems to have gotten the message. According to the latest proxy statement, Stanley Black & Decker ended its practice of staggered terms for directors, a shareholder-friendly move that makes directors less entrenched. It also significantly raised the minimum stock ownership required of its executive officers.

The company didn’t stop there. It said that, henceforth, new severance agreements with executives would no longer have the company foot their tax bills, a practice known as gross-up. Executives also have to hold on to stock options or restricted shares they receive for a year after they are granted.

And John F. Lundgren, the C.E.O., took a 63 percent pay cut, according to data compiled for The New York Times by Equilar. (Still, Mr. Lundgren got $12.1 million last year.)

Another example of a shareholder-induced change came at Johnson & Johnson. In 2011, its pay practices got a thumbs-down from a quarter of the shares voted at its annual meeting. This year, J.& J. revamped its long-term incentive program for executives.

Out went longstanding cash payments for long-term incentives. Now, the company awards stock units that vest only over three years and after meeting three goals aligned with shareholder returns. The company’s proxy statement said the change came “as a result of what we learned in 2011.”

FABRIZIO FERRI, an assistant professor at the Columbia Business School, said he thought say-on-pay votes would bring many changes like these. He bases this view on his studies of such votes among companies in Britain, where they have been a fact of life since 2001.

Mr. Ferri and David Maber, an assistant professor at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, examined companies whose pay practices received objections from more than 20 percent of the shares cast. They found that after such votes, these companies were more likely to remove provisions that were seen to reward failure than those where shareholders had not expressed high dudgeon over pay. Once the problematic provisions vanished, the companies experienced lower dissent — or none at all — in the next proxy season.

These shifts show the positive impact shareholders can have when they are engaged in the proxy process. Say-on-pay votes “assure that rules of the game are fair in terms of the process of setting pay and that there are clear checks and balances on provisions that may be viewed as controversial or that may be manipulated,” Mr. Ferri said in an interview last week.

But for every active shareholder who votes for change, thousands of passive ones remain disengaged. Votes that abstain, are never cast or that are delegated to brokerage firms to vote, typically in support of management, still make up a lot of the proxy counts.

Many shareholders have long felt that voting against management is futile. But it is troubling that so many are absent when it is becoming clearer that they can make a difference.

“The higher the level of ‘absent’ votes, the easier it is for someone to exploit a company,” said Gary Lutin, chairman of the Shareholder Forum, a series of programs supporting investor access to decision-making information. “Self-dealing executives know this, and so do opportunistic activists.”

Consider an analysis by Morningstar of shareholder votes last year at the 100 American corporations whose chief executives were paid the most, based on a separate analysis conducted for The Times by Equilar. Morningstar found that the median absentee vote on pay among these companies in 2011 was 24 percent, a figure that equals the median absentee voting at the companies in the Russell 3000.

The median supportive vote at these companies, meanwhile, was 66.6 percent last year, while dissent stood at 6.1, Morningstar said.

Absentee votes reflect an abdication of shareholders’ rights and obligations as owners. Because non-votes are typically removed from the count when calculating results for such proposals, the outcomes often look more favorable to management than they actually are.

At first glance, for example, shareholders of Viacom, a perennial at the top of the best-paid list, largely supported the company’s pay practices last year. Only 3.41 percent of the shares voted were opposed in 2011, while 82 percent supported the company’s pay.

But take a closer look. About 15 percent of the shares outstanding did not vote on the company’s pay practices at all. And when the millions of shares held by its insiders, like Sumner M. Redstone, its chairman, were eliminated from the equation, support for its pay eroded significantly. Counting only shares voted by independent owners, just 8.9 percent supported the pay. Almost double that percentage — 17.3 percent — opposed.

Framed as a percent of votes cast for and against Viacom’s pay, fully two-thirds of nonmanagement votes opposed the compensation, while one-third supported it.

In the company’s shareholder meeting in early March, shareholders voted again on a number of matters. One involved Viacom’s senior executive short-term incentive plan, with a potential pool of 525 top employees. The plan’s terms stated that the maximum award to any participant for a performance period could not exceed eight times that person’s annual base salary, or $50 million, whichever came first.

The results of that vote showed that 92.7 percent of shares supported the plan while 2.9 percent opposed it and 4.4 percent were absent. But eliminating management’s stake brings those figures down to 64.4 percent in support among independent shareholders, 14.3 percent opposing and 21.3 percent absent.

SO who are all these absentee shareholders? Probably not institutional investors, who consider it their duty to vote the shares they hold on behalf of their clients. If these holders abstain from voting, it may be because they hope to stay away from a controversy at a company.

Most likely, the AWOL stockholders are people who simply can’t be bothered to vote. Like Americans who stay home on Election Day, these investors are giving leaders — in this case, corporate ones — free rein to do what they please.

For years, investors have been powerless to change the dynamic at companies that award outsize pay to executives for undersize performance. Now that shareholders’ voices can at last be heard, silence should not be an option.

Source ›››

Dénoncer les pharaons

47 % d’augmentation salariale

2012-04-04
Hôtel Fairmont Reine-Élizabeth, Montréal

L’Exil fiscal

Les grandes banques sommées de traquer les évadés fiscaux américains

2012-04-04
Anne Michel, Le Monde

Barack Obama a signé le 18 mars 2010 une nouvelle législation fiscale américaine, applicable à compter du 1er janvier 2013 par toutes les banques étrangères.

F-A-T-C-A. Cinq lettres qui sèment le trouble dans le secteur bancaire mondial et créent des désordres diplomatiques entre les Etats-Unis et le reste du monde.

Elles sont l’acronyme d’une nouvelle législation fiscale américaine - le Foreign Account Tax Compliance act - signée le 18 mars 2010 par le président Barack Obama, et applicable à compter du 1er janvier 2013 par toutes les banques étrangères.

Ce texte extraterritorial - il s’impose hors du territoire américain à des groupes non américains -, organise une véritable révolution fiscale. Il contraint les banques, partout dans le monde, à traquer les fraudeurs au fisc américain dans la totalité de leurs filiales et à les sanctionner pour le compte de l’administration fiscale des Etats-Unis.

"C’est totalement inédit!, relève le patron d’une grande banque française. Des institutions non américaines vont se trouver directement associées à la lutte contre l’évasion fiscale aux Etats-Unis!" "Nous n’avons pas le choix, poursuit ce dirigeant. Si nous n’appliquons pas la loi, nous risquons des mesures de rétorsion sur nos activités aux Etats-Unis."

Concrètement, les institutions auront obligation d’identifier ceux de leurs clients qui possèdent la nationalité américaine, ou qui auraient un lien, actuel ou passé, avec les Etats-Unis. Elles devront exercer une surveillance active des comptes, dès lors que ceux-ci affichent plus de 50 000 dollars (37 900 euros), et "approfondie" au-delà du million.

Le moindre "indice" d’américanité devra être étudié. Après avoir recherché la "citoyenneté américaine", les banques devront aussi regarder si : les clients ne sont pas nés aux Etats-Unis; s’ils n’y ont jamais mentionné une adresse de résidence, de correspondance ou de poste restante, ou même un numéro de téléphone; s’ils n’ont jamais transmis d’instruction de virement vers un compte aux Etats-Unis ou s’ils n’ont jamais donné mandat ou pouvoir à une personne ayant un lien avec les Etats-Unis.

Les clients fichés par erreur devront "apporter la preuve qu’ils ne sont pas américains", dit Fatca. Quant aux citoyens américains, ils devront justifier de toutes leurs transactions. Les informations nominatives seront alors transmises à l’autorité fiscale américaine, l’Internal revenue service (IRS).

Faute de documents probants permettant de le faire, il reviendra aux banques d’opérer une "retenue punitive de 30 % sur les transactions" non justifiées.

COÛT DE LA RÉFORME

"C’est l’une des plus importantes réformes des prochaines années", soulignent les experts juridiques du cabinet de conseil et d’audit Deloitte à Paris. Les contrôles pourront être mis en oeuvre progressivement, d’ici à 2017.

En France, le coût de la réforme, qui suppose d’adapter les systèmes informatiques, est estimé à 200 millions d’euros au bas mot pour chacun des grands réseaux bancaires (BNP Paribas, Société générale, Crédit agricole, BPCE, etc.). Ce chiffre est confirmé, en privé, par plusieurs banques.

La réforme américaine s’inscrit dans un contexte mondial de renforcement de la lutte contre l’évasion fiscale, de la part d’Etats endettés, en quête de rentrées fiscales.

Les Etats-Unis ont toujours taxé leurs résidents à l’étranger comme des résidents américains. L’impôt payé dans le pays de résidence est déduit de l’impôt américain. L’impôt total équivaut à celui qui aurait dû être payé aux Etats-Unis. Mais les citoyens américains ne se déclarent pas spontanément. D’où la loi Fatca.

Mal à l’aise à l’idée de traiter directement avec le fisc américain - ce qui pourrait contrevenir à certaines lois, comme la loi sur la protection des données personnelles en France -, les banques ont saisi leurs gouvernements.

La France, l’Allemagne, le Royaume-Uni, l’Italie et l’Espagne ont engagé une négociation avec les Etats-Unis, afin que les données et les instructions transitent entre administrations fiscales. Une façon pour les banques de se placer sous le parapluie des Etats.

Anne Michel Sarkozy et Hollande veulent taxer les exilés fiscaux

La France aura-t-elle sa loi Fatca? Nicolas Sarkozy et François Hollande ont annoncé des projets de taxation des exilés fiscaux : le premier promet "un impôt lié à la nationalité", le second veut taxer la fortune des exilés en Suisse, Belgique et au Luxembourg. Il s’agit dans les deux cas d’une révolution fiscale : à ce jour, l’impôt est dû dans le pays de résidence. Dans l’attente, un décret sera bientôt publié, qui créera "l’exit tax", voulue par le gouvernement pour taxer les plus-values réalisées en France, mais exercées à l’étranger par les exilés fiscaux.

Source ›››

Salaires exorbitants

Le Robin des banques perturbe l’assemblée de la Nationale

(Reportage de Philippe-Antoine Saulnier, Radio-Canada)

4 avril 2012
Jean-François Cloutier, Argent

Le grand patron de la Banque Nationale, Louis Vachon, s’est vu octroyer une rémunération record de 8,5 M $ en 2011, une hausse de 32 % dénoncée bruyamment par le Robin des banques, Yves Michaud, à l’assemblée annuelle des actionnaires.

La présence du fondateur du Mouvement d’éducation et de défense des actionnaires (MÉDAC) n’est pas passée inaperçue au cours de la rencontre tenue au chic hôtel Reine-Élizabeth qui s’est allongée sur toute l’avant-midi.

Tout en critiquant le français utilisé dans la circulaire de la Nationale, M. Michaud est intervenu à plusieurs reprises pour dénoncer le salaire de M. Vachon.

Il a aussi croisé le fer avec Jean Douville, le président du conseil d’administration, en lui demandant sans succès de dire à voix haute les raisons motivant le rejet des propositions du MÉDAC.

En 2011, M. Vachon a touché la somme de 8,5 M $ pour ses services, contre 5,7 M $ un an plus tôt.

Dans la circulaire, le conseil détaille les raisons expliquant sa volonté de mieux payer son plus haut dirigeant.

« Les membres du Conseil ont jugé qu’il ne serait pas dans l’intérêt à long terme de la Banque, eu égard notamment à sa capacité d’attirer les meilleurs candidats, de maintenir la rémunération de son plus haut dirigeant au bas de l’échelle de son groupe de référence », indique-t-on.

M. Michaud en a rajouté en entrevue avec les journalistes. « Les banques empruntent à un et demi pour cent et nous prêtent à 4 %. Il n’y a pas de mérite à faire des profits dans ces conditions », a-t-il dit.

« Michael Sabia, le PDG de la Caisse de dépôt, gagne 500 000 $. Jean Charest, le premier ministre du Québec, gagne 400 000 $. Comment un patron de grande banque peut-il gagner 10 M $? » a-t-il demandé.

Les diverses propositions de MÉDAC ont cependant toutes été battues dans une proportion de plus de 90 %.

En entrevue à Argent, M. Vachon a justifié sa rémunération en disant que les actionnaires avaient leur mot à dire.

« Nous avons tenu compte des observations du MÉDAC et nous soumettons maintenant la rémunération des hauts dirigeants à un vote consultatif. Ils ont dit oui à 95 % cette année », a-t-il dit.

Pannes informatiques

Par ailleurs, sur la question des pannes informatiques en janvier, M. Vachon a reconnu qu’on ne s’expliquait pas encore ce qui avait pu causer la surcharge de courant qui a endommagé l’équipement du centre de données.

M. Vachon n’a pas voulu dire si le contrat d’IBM, le fournisseur informatique de la Nationale, serait renouvelé.

« La perte financière est minime, mais l’effet de notoriété est négatif. On n’aime pas ça voir ça dans les journaux », a-t-il dit.

Source ›››

Le Devoir ›››, La Presse ›››, Radio-Canada (Philippe-Antoine Saulnier) ›››, Argent (Carl Renaud) ›››, Le Soleil (Brigitte Breton) ›››

 

Fuir l’impôt

Les paradis fiscaux : des milliards à l’abri de l’impôt

19 mars 2012
Radio-Canada

Environ la moitié de la réserve mondiale d’argent transite par les paradis fiscaux, et environ 40 % y sont déposés. Des paradis fiscaux, il y en a environ 80 dans le monde, et ils permettent aux individus, aux multinationales, aux banques, aux compagnies minières et au crime organisé d’agir avec ces fonds comme bon leur semble.

Pourquoi le paradis fiscal comme tel est-il légal? Pourquoi ne sommes-nous pas capables de mettre un frein à ces sorties massives d’argent?

Pour nous expliquer le monde complexe des paradis fiscaux, nos invités : Alain Deneault est chercheur indépendant et enseignant au Département de science politique de l‘Université de Montréal. Il vient de publier vendredi dernier une étude sur les paradis fiscaux. Il est un des membres fondateurs du Réseau pour la justice fiscale au Québec, et il a également signé l’essai Offshore, paradis fiscaux et souveraineté criminelle, aux éditions Écosociété.

Messaoud Abda est directeur du programme de lutte contre la criminalité financière et professeur à l’université de Sherbrooke, CGA. Il est fellow à l’Institut des banquiers canadiens. Il forme des professionnels en lutte contre la criminalité financière.

Source ›››

Document audio ›››

6 000 milliards de dollars dans les paradis fiscaux ›››

Offshore — Paradis fiscaux et souveraineté criminelle ›››

 

Le mal de cœur

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

March 14, 2012
Greg Smith, The New York Times

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English : get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth : If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future : You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.

When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.

My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.

Greg Smith is resigning today as a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

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