Prophil, a research and strategy consulting company, is organizing the second edition of the AG du futur, Tuesday February 6 at the Théâtre des Variétés, in Paris. It is a conference-show, in the form of a general assembly, which questions the role of companies and that of shareholders.
Geneviève Ferone Creuzet, co-founder of the consulting firm Prophil and the AG of the future, affirms that it is “obvious” that small shareholders have a power that they are unaware of. And she hopes with this initiative to make them understand “that they are shareholders, that they have interests to defend and to think differently”.
franceinfo: Why, in your opinion, is it necessary to do education around general assemblies ?
Geneviève Ferone Creuzet : General meetings of shareholders are theater, they’re posturing, so we said to ourselves “why not divert the codes?”. We therefore created a completely fictitious company called Mirliton, a beautiful flagship of the agri-food industry, family-owned and listed on the stock exchange, so we put all the constraints on ourselves. This company does not exist, but, through an extremely demanding script, we will make sure to ask questions in the form of resolutions to the spectators, who are the shareholders. So the spectators of one evening will slip into the shoes of shareholders of this company, they will embrace its legend and when the time comes to vote, they will say to themselves: “Do I vote for or against?” And we get them to think.
“Indeed, it is a fictitious general meeting of shareholders, but very educational.”
Geneviève Ferone Creuzeton franceinfo
Because the interest of the “GM of the future” is to get them to ask questions and get away from this idea according to which shareholders are an amorphous mass of people we don’t know, who are distant, above ground.
Do shareholders, especially small shareholders, have power that they are unaware of? ?
Of course, it’s obvious. We always forget that shareholders live the same life as us. So we are going to give them back power by going to seek them out and we hope that they will understand, because they are shareholders, that they have interests to defend, that they have an interest in thinking differently, in thinking differently, where put their money and what to do with their money.
You say that we must enter the era of post-growth. What does it mean ?
Post-growth is quite simple, it’s simply dealing with reality. The reality is that we have done almost anything, beyond planetary limits. We have turned the climate upside down, we are in extremely tense situations on water, on the phosphorus and nitrogen cycle, people are living in an undignified manner, we are not sure of guaranteeing access to essential services . So post-growth is really about landing on the debt that must be purged and rebuilding a new imagination, but a new imagination that is not magical thinking, something that is tangible. So good growth means undertaking in an ecologically and socially just world.
There are still resolutions that concern climate action by companies, but, according to you, shareholders vote for them without knowing what they are talking about. ?
In fact, I sometimes wonder if they don’t vote without knowing, without really having in-depth knowledge of what is happening. I think we need to get them out of this passive role because they vote through intermediaries. They are intermediaries in fact, who tell them how to vote.
Intermediaries who tell them how to vote, based on the dividend and not based on the general interest ?
They are told how to vote based on the dividend they could receive in the short term and from a purely financial perspective. We encourage them to think in a social and environmental dimension, and to integrate medium and long term issues. We tell them “be careful, tomorrow’s value is not the short-term value you think you have, it will slip through your fingers”.
According to a financial letter, CAC40 companies returned 97 billion euros to their shareholders in 2023, a record. So ultimately, shareholders are right to continue voting the way they do, it brings them money ?
Once again, they are right in the short term. And again, when we say shareholders, we surely think of large institutional shareholders, large pension funds. And these large pension funds, they are also caught in a pinch, they also have to give money to retirees on the other side of the world. And so we can clearly see that this system is working on its head.
“If we think about it, everyone’s interest is to review what will create the value of tomorrow and it is certainly not this headlong climatic and social rush.”
Geneviève Ferone Creuzeton franceinfo
So reclaim a little power by asking the right questions, by informing yourself and above all by asking yourself this central question: Are we going to be good ancestors? Because what is at stake is the economy of tomorrow.
With this speech that you call post-growth, are you not afraid of making large groups flee to countries where fewer questions are asked? ?
What is certain is that this subject is political, very clearly. But I don’t see how we can avoid it. Tomorrow, in a world where the global temperature will have risen by four degrees, the question of dividends absolutely no longer arises. So, today is the time to invest. A bit like you know, our great-grandparents invested.
“At the beginning, capitalism was not an income, it was taking a risk.”
Geneviève Ferone Creuzeton franceinfo
We want to reconnect with this culture of risk, that’s why we say “post-growth” and not “degrowth”. We grapple with reality, we reconnect with inventions, with progress, but we re-embed progress within planetary limits and that is what will create value tomorrow. So today, we are in a world which is really where we are, in a twilight, and where we are preparing for the future. That’s why it’s called the AG of the future.