Rapporter & tendenser

EU parat med bedre beskyttelse af whistleblowers Guardian skriver, at “Employees who blow the whistle on corporate tax avoidance or cheating on product standards would be entitled to special legal status under a draft EU law. The European commission will next week propose legislation that intends to protect whistleblowers. Recent scandals have exposed the limited help available for people seeking to expose corporate behaviour in the public interest. Next month, Antoine Deltour , a former PricewaterhouseCoopers employee who received a six-month suspended sentence for helping to reveal tax avoidance on an industrial scale , faces another court appearance. This is despite his conviction being overturned on appeal . Proponents of an EU whistleblower law argue it could have led to earlier exposure of the VW emissions scandal . Systematic cheating on clean-air tests at Europe’s largest car manufacturer was uncovered by the US Environmental Protection Agency.”

Sådan kan institutionelle investorer bidrage med social værdi
To forskere fra Stanford University har leveret et forskningspapir med titlen. ”How Investors Can (and Can’t) Create Social Value. Heri hedder det, at ”most investors have a single goal: to earn the highest financial return. These socially-neutral investors maximize their risk-adjusted returns and would not accept a lower financial return from an investment that also produced social benefits. An increasing number of socially-motivated investors have goals beyond maximizing profits. Some seek to align their investments with their social values (value alignment), for example by only owning stock in companies whose activities are consistent with the investor’s values. Others may also want their investment to make portfolio companies create more social value (social value creation). In an essay available here , we show that while achieving value alignment is relatively easy, creating social value is far more difficult. The literature published by asset managers, foundations, and trade associations expresses optimism that socially-motivated investors can create social value, particularly through non-concessionary investments. We are skeptical about these assertions; they are often too loose to support a disciplined assessment of the claim, and the absence of fees keyed to social, rather than financial, value creation fuels that skepticism. To address this problem, we first offer a taxonomy of socially-motivated investments so that investors can clearly articulate their goals, and asset managers can clearly articulate how their performance should be measured.”

Debat om overdreven CEO pay fortsætter
Holdninger fra et roundtable afholdt for nylig med deltagelse af kapitalforvaltere, selskaber og tænketanke: ”We have to remember there’s a market for talent. Around the edges, we can have the quantum discussion. But our collective interests are in dealing with long-term incentives and dialing down the complexity we’ve all created. * Having the right CEO is critical, and boards are understandably averse to losing a good CEO. But is the pool really that small? Is mobility such that excessive pay is required to keep them? While there are some exceptions, the superstar CEO is a notion I think we are evolving away from. * Financial compensation is an extrinsic motivator. At some level, additional money won’t motivate an executive the way we perceive, and it might actually diminish motivation. We need to shift the discussion to what intrinsically motivates executives.* Pay is badly broken, and it’s not just design—it’s magnitude. Quantum is a problem even at high-performing companies. But I don’t know how we get the genie back in the bottle. How would you go about introducing some restraint? The whole system is set up to do what your peers do. * Yes, levels are too high. Why? Part of the challenge is that the total number is an open question. Do you look at what has vested? Do you look at realized pay? Do you make assumptions and look at estimated future payouts? There’s no simple answer, and investors are taking different approaches.”