Internationale rapporter og tendenser

BP kræver 18 mio. kr. retur fra fyret CEO. Engelske The Guardian skriver, at ”BP has clawed back £1.8m from sacked former chief executive Bernard Looney, but the oil company has awarded his successor an £8m pay packet that has been described by campaigners as “sickening”. Looney left in September after failing to disclose personal relationships with colleagues to the board after a tip-off from a whistleblower. The board later formally dismissed him and said it had found his actions amounted to “serious misconduct”. The departure, less than four years into his tenure as boss, shocked shareholders and forced the FTSE 100 company into an emergency search for a successor, even as it made billions of pounds in profits. Oil and gas companies have benefited enormously from the global energy crisis caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.”

Revisionsudvalgets opgaver og ansvar i relation til kunstig intelligens (AI). Deloitte skriver i en gennemgang, at ”Any discussion of risk in 2024 will almost certainly include the risks associated with the growing use of artificial intelligence, or AI. And it is noteworthy that some of the risks of AI have little to do with the responsibilities of the audit committee. For example, the compensation or similar committee will likely be responsible for overseeing reductions in force and other workforce issues that may result from increasing reliance upon AI, and the nominating/ governance committee may be more heavily involved in overseeing the use of AI. However, the audit committee will clearly be involved from a general risk oversight perspective. At the same time, like so many aspects of technology, AI has the potential to yield great improvements. For example, in the audit committee’s core areas of focus—audit and financial reporting—AI might be used to spot irregular transactions or inconsistencies, to detect fraud, or to identify computational or other errors.”

Stigende aktionæraktivisme også på forårets generalforsamlinger. Konsulenthus skriver om tendenser I aktionæraktivisme: “An increasing number of U.S companies are identifying activism as a risk in their corporate disclosures. In 2023, 23.4% of Russell 3000 companies disclosed shareholder activism as a risk in their 10-K reporting, up from 21.4% a year prior. Activism levels remain high in many markets, with shareholders looking further afield for value creation opportunities. In 2023, 982 companies were subject to activist campaigns globally, a 4% rise compared to a year prior and the highest level since 2019. 2023 played host to a 25.5%, 13.4% and 7.8% increase in the number of companies subject to campaigns in Canada, Asia and the U.S., respectively. Activists are increasingly focusing on corporate remuneration policies, looking for companies to be prepared to weather the challenges brought on by rising costs and slowing economic growth. In the U.S., 81 companies faced remuneration-related demands last year, a 37.3% increase compared to the 59 seen in 2022 and the highest increase of any demand type. Shareholder proposals concerning pay are also winning increased backing, with investors keen to understand policies governing severance and clawback payments.”

AI and talent: It’s very early days. Deloitte skriver i en analyse, at ”as generative AI grows from its initial phases to larger-scale implementation across industries and geographies, it’s already transforming the way work gets done. Recent Deloitte US research sums up this moment: “The advent of generative AI has delighted and surprised the world, throwing open the door to AI capabilities once thought to be still far off in our future. With a remarkable capacity to consume and generate novel outputs, generative AI is prompting excitement and stimulating ideas around how this type of AI technology can be used for organizational benefit. Far more than a sophisticated chatbot, generative AI has the potential to unleash innovation, permit new ways of working, amplify other AI systems and technologies, and transform enterprises across every industry. How are directors thinking about AI and its impact on people, productivity, and jobs? Nearly half of respondents say operational efficiency and productivity pressures (48%) and technological developments, including AI (46%), will impact their organization’s future workforce (figure 4). “Companies say that the productivity effect of AI will be more powerful than the displacement effect. But I would say it’s just far too early to know the answer to that question,” Kamhi says. “AI is changing very rapidly. And I think it’s difficult for us or for any management team to really have a clear picture of what that is going to look like in three years’ time.”

Morten W. Langer