Governance. The amount of remuneration of major business leaders now comes back into the news with the regularity of what journalistic language calls a “chestnut tree”. In other words, information as recurring and inconsequential as the falling of leaves in autumn. The terms of the debate, the agreed arguments and the resigned indignations are known in advance. We know they won’t change anything.
Thus the extravagant remuneration of 36 million euros obtained for the year 2023 by Carlos Tavares, director of the Stellantis group, did not interest the public for long, and the brief astonishment of some was finally forgotten in the fatalistic indifference of a lot.
Brutal reality
This is because it now seems accepted that the gratification of top managers comes under the private contract, supposedly concluded with the shareholders alone, and that they granted it to Mr. Tavares by a majority of 70% during the general assembly. Criticism then runs out of steam as if it becomes inappropriate when it is not interpreted, in the frequent terms of a primary psychologism, as the fruit of unsatisfied jealousies or of a supposed complex of the French with regard to great fortunes. .
Ultimately, knowing whether Mr. Tavares deserves this level of income rather than another raises moral and political questions once seen as essential to the social order, but which it seems pointless to ask again. Because the brutal reality is that this remuneration was obtained because Carlos Tavares benefits from a favorable balance of power in the governance of his company:
– On the one hand, Stellantis’ economic successes allow it to influence the criteria defining the calculation of its bonus (which includes, for example, financial performance but not the long-term ecological impacts of its strategy);
– on the other hand, for the shareholders who validate it, its amount remains derisory compared to the cost of a protest aimed at effectiveness. Mr. Tavares without reluctance makes people pay the spectacular price of a privilege of location.
A hot debate
But he is not the only one. Actors are doing it everywhere, as recent news has shown. Thus, SNCF staff managed to negotiate an adaptation of their retirement conditions that was more favorable than those that the 2023 law imposes on all employees: here again, knowing whether the arduousness of their jobs merits exceptional treatment opens a heated debate.
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