Gestion des entreprises et gouvernance publique : que nous apprennent les classements mondiaux ?

Cette note produite par le
département Recherche de la Deutsche
Bank étudie la façon
dont la gestion des entreprises et le
cadre juridico-institutionnel dans lequel le
secteur privé opère sont perçus dans
différents pays. 

Nations compete for investment capital, and
the assurances investors seek as they decide to
provide that capital are universal. The quality
of institutions matter. The legal system plays
a particularly important role, with strong
investor protection laws generally linked with
broader and deeper capital markets, a more
dispersed shareholder base, and a more
efficient allocation of capital across firms.
Arguably, good corporate governance at the firm
level may at least partly compensate for
perceived weaknesses in the institutional and
legal framework, which has led to a rising
demand for a global benchmark of corporate
behaviour. In response to this growing demand,
the Financial Times (FT), in partnership with
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), has
recently produced a pilot index, which attempts
to assess the quality of firmlevel governance
in the 23 largest capital markets. 

In this paper, we compare the FT/ISS index
rankings with survey evidence from the World
Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness
Report. We then juxtapose the perceived quality
of corporate governance at the firm level with
the quality of the legal and institutional
framework in which companies operate in. Based
on this analysis, we identify overachievers who
transcend local practice as well as
underachievers whose practices are sub-par.
Finally, we discuss corporate governance in the
EU accession countries and the extent to which
the quality of governance has affected the mode
of entry for foreign investment. 

We draw three broad conclusions: First,
although perceptions about the quality of
corporate governance at the company level
appear to be consistent with the propositions
of the “law matters” school, other
factors such as politics and cultural and
historical roots seem to play an important
role, too. Second, there is a relatively close
correlation between the measured, as well as
perceived quality of corporate governance at
the country level and the company level.
However, there exist important outliers.
Importantly, there are several countries whose
companies on average appear to follow better
practices than the quality of their legal and
regulatory environments would suggest. Good
corporate governance at the company level may
compensate for weak framework conditions,
suggesting that a systems-focused view may lead
to excessive risk aversion. Third, perceptions
about the quality of corporate governance at
the company level are largely in line with
measurable indicators employed by the FTSE/ISS
index, providing further support for the
hypothesis that a company’s governance
practices need not be tied or constrained by
its local environment. 

The above summary has been takend directly
from a Research Note written by Peter
Cornelius for Deutsche Bank Research. The
paper is accessible in full at the 
DB Research website

.