Companies. We should thank the board of directors of Stellantis (merger of PSA and Fiat Chrysler) for a decision which, by unanimously opposing it, sounded the alarm. Public authorities, opposition leaders and observers judged that the remuneration of the CEO, Carlos Tavares, was shocking and unjustifiable.
Even Stellantis shareholders issued an unfavorable opinion. And, if the question of the excessive salaries of the leaders is old, the general disapproval was so strong that the President of the Republic pronounced himself, on April 14, for a framework of these remunerations on a European scale.
It is to be feared, however, that the alert will quickly be forgotten. The directors of Stellantis did not remember that in 2013 Philippe Varin, then chairman of the management board of PSA, had given up a hat retirement which contrasted unacceptably with the sacrifices demanded of employees. Beyond the indignation of the moment, this reform will succeed if it is based on a shared and responsible conception of the entrepreneur.
We must first challenge the usual received ideas. Like the alignment on a high “world market price” of the leader, or the idea that the talent of the latter is the only cause of the success of his company. Indeed, excessive remuneration was rare in the second half of the XXᵉ century, and yet there is no reason to say that the leaders of the time were less talented or less in demand.
Only the financial results count
Remunerations then exploded in the 1990s, when the company’s shareholder doctrine became dominant and prescribed aligning executive remuneration with the interests of shareholders. At the base of the manager’s salary, there were no longer the multiple responsibilities vis-à-vis the personnel, the company’s ecosystem or the territories. Only the company’s financial results mattered.
But these criticisms will not be enough. To justify the limitation of executive salaries – for example, to a certain multiple of the minimum salary – several studies argue that a different definition of the “entrepreneur” must be included in the law, so that his duties are recognized by statute. (Stéphane Vernac, “What can workers expect from the status of company manager?”, Labor law review, Dalloz, 2017, page 519). Because the law only recognizes the manager of the company, defined as the person authorized to sign contracts on behalf of the latter, or the representative of the employer required to respect labor law…
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