The first objective of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) is to generate an attractive risk adjusted return for depositors. Doing so sustainably is the next objective, Bertrand Millot, its head of sustainability. Speaking at the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance ‘Stakeholder Capitalism in a Canadian Context,’ he said a company should be run to benefit all stakeholders, not just shareholders.
The first objective of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) is to generate an attractive risk adjusted return for depositors. Doing so sustainably is the next objective, Bertrand Millot, its head of sustainability. Speaking at the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance ‘Stakeholder Capitalism in a Canadian Context,’ he said a company should be run to benefit all stakeholders, not just shareholders. A company may be a legal construct, but really it's a blend of staff, clients, suppliers, competitors, lenders, regulators, local communities, the planet, and shareholders. In order to succeed, it needs to be balanced. Without balance, a corporation could face disaster and he used Boeing as an example. He said it decided it was too focused on engineering so it switched to focusing on shareholder value. Worrying about various financial optimizations and playing with shares and dividends and cost cutting on a massive scale meant in the end, it completely lost track of its roots and its business. The result was 346 people died in a crash which killed shareholder value, grounded its planes for years, saw it suffer a huge loss of confidence, and a large increase in its debt. “So to us, it's very, very important for the long term benefit of our depositors that the balance of interests and the value of each one of these players be considered by management and that management looks much further than just shareholder value in the short term. It looks long term,” he said. “We take that into account when we vote and when we interact with management.”
