Amerikanske giga-pensionskasser stepper op i det aktive ejerskab om klimaansvarlighed: Den californiske pensionskasse for skolelærere med 315 mia USD under forvaltning stemte dette forår mod bestyrelsernes klimatiltag i 2035 selskaber: “For the 2023 proxy season, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) — the world’s largest educator-only pension fund with more than $315 billion in assets—stepped up its efforts to hold companies around the globe accountable for failing to address climate change risks: CalSTRS voted against the boards of directors at a record 2,035 global companies because they did not provide necessary climate risk disclosures. In 2021, CalSTRS made a pledge to achieve a net zero investment portfolio by 2050, or sooner. The steps CalSTRS takes to achieve net zero carbon emissions are rooted in its mission to provide California’s public school teachers with a secure financial future. As a part of this mission, CalSTRS will continue to hold the companies in its global portfolio accountable for addressing sustainable business practices and providing minimum climate risk disclosures to investors.”
Den samfundsmæssige betydning af selskabers fremtidige syn på deres purpose. I et forskningspapir hedder det, at ”Debates regarding corporate purpose are long-standing, with conflicting visions extending dating back decades. The controversy has intensified recently due to concerns that if corporate America does not forsake prioritizing shareholder interests, social and economic stability could be undermined and the fate of the planet could be jeopardized due to climate change. A by-product of debate thus far is an extensive and rapidly growing literature on corporate purpose, and the closely related topic of corporate stakeholders. A recent paper of mine, ‘ The Past, Present and Future of Corporate Purpose ’, makes an original contribution to the discourse by focusing on a topic that has only rarely been addressed in a systematic fashion: the future of corporate purpose.”
Er det godt eller dårligt, at selskaber opsamlet store mængder cash: Forskere undersøger dette spørgsmål nærmere: ”Many corporations have been criticized for accumulating large amounts of cash on their balance sheets. Does holding on to all this cash represent a good use of corporate resources? On the one hand, consistent with the label “cash hoarding” often used in this context, firms’ cash holdings could be excessive and harmful to their valuations. That would be the case, for example, if having large cash balances increases the likelihood that this money will be spent unwisely (Jensen, 1986) or if more productive alternative uses exist for the cash, such as investing in new projects or paying it out to investors. On the other hand, firms also hold cash for many legitimate reasons, in which case large cash holdings could be optimal even if they appear excessive.”
Kvindekvoter for bestyrelser: Ren politik eller en god business case? I forskningspapir hedder det: “In sum, there seems to be an apparent political desire for gender equality in the boardroom, but just as much resistance against effective implementation. This may explain why a highly skewed gender imbalance persists in practice. Unfortunately, the causes for the underrepresentation of women in management positions remain unclear. Both explicit (old boys’ networks) and implicit (biases) discrimination is possible, but so is a simple underrepresentation of women in the executive labor market. The discussion about the imperative of gender quotas tends to presume the former and makes a business case for diversity: Gender-diverse leadership teams make ‘better’ decisions in complex economic environments. This is what numerous studies on the association between diversity and business success claim to prove. Indeed, if balanced gender ratios actually increased performance, companies were currently making inefficient selection decisions, for example, by discriminating in recruitment decisions. According to this interpretation, gender quotas would be legitimate in two ways: Politically, they would realize the equality mandate, while economically remedying market failure and thus increasing the efficiency of companies. In contrast, if the skewed gender ratios were caused by a shortage of suitable female executives, the quota system would negatively impact the efficiency of companies, and thus indirectly harm them.”
Morten W. Langer
