Le lien entre l'actionnariat et le score ESG des entreprises

Abstract

Our consumption behaviors have been destroying the planet for years. In the current climate emergency, solutions must be quickly put in place. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), measured through the ESG score, appears as a way out in the financial sector. The growing interest in the subject of CSR raises questions about the factors that can influence investment in it and consequently the ESG score. Ownership seems to be a possible factor influencing decisions within companies. Could shareholder structure influence the social engagement of firms ? The purpose of this study is to reveal a potential impact of ownership structure on ESG scores using a sample of 575 European companies between 2011 and 2020. Our results suggest that the power held by the largest shareholder, measured by the percentage of capital owned, does indeed have an impact on the ESG score. This shareholder has in fact the most power in the decisions that will be taken. Its investment desires therefore have an impact on the company's policy. However, the effect of ownership concentration on CSR should not, be analyzed individually. We discovered that the influence of the major shareholder on these investments depended not only on his identity but also on the country studied. We therefore believe that a general effect cannot be put forward when studying the relationship between ownership concentration and ESG score. The context of this concentration is important and must be considered to draw any conclusions. Diverging outcomes are mainly due to the characteristics and motivations of investors, which also vary from one country to another. By dividing shareholders into five groups (family, institutional investor, government, corporate and individual), we can presume their incentives towards CSR. Our results show that when the State is the largest owner, it has a positive effect on the ESG score, whereas companies and individuals have a negative impact if they are the largest owners. Family and institutional investors have not provided clear results regarding their presence as major shareholder. We believe that for the first, this is due to contradictory motivations concerning CSR. For the latter, we believe that a distinction must be made between short-term and long-term investment horizons. We were not able to measure whether country played a significant role in ESG score variations, due to the limitations of our methodology. However, we did find out that ownership concentration had a different impact across countries. This change of impact concerning the ownership structure was still poorly covered in the previous papers and we believe that it could bring an interesting contribution to the literature. This study provides economic and political agents with a new and updated vision in understanding the involvement of companies in CSR, by showing the relevance of considering the heterogeneity of shareholders when considering the topic.