Translating the following article into Chinese
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/jun/11/bhs-scandal-change-company-law-the-big-issue
BHS scandal: an overhaul of company law is needed to curb
greedy owners
Your leader is right to draw attention to executive behaviour at the heart of
the BHS scandal but to see this in terms of a moral vacuum is to misunderstand
the nature of human behaviour (“BHS and the moral vacuum in big business”,
Comment).
Rather than deploring the owners’ apparent lack of moral scruple, let us instead
ask from where the sense of propriety that defines our current crop of business
titans draws its strength.
Modern economics teaches many things that are of dubious merit but the idea that
shipbuilding, steel manufacture, high street retail or healthcare are just
different forms of money-making is the most insidious. Until the Chicago school
economic principles that define our culture are overturned then no amount of
talk of corporate social responsibility will put things right.
The problem with BHS and other big businesses is the structure of company law
that is based on allowing owners to do as they please with no legal duties to
the interests of staff, suppliers or customers, provided this is approved by the
AGM.
So far as I understand it, owners are able to take capital out of the firm for
their short-term advantage, even if this leaves the company with insufficient
resources to invest in the future of the firm, provided the firm is not trading
as insolvent. What is needed is a wholesale reform of company law, adopting the
German model that places a duty on company owners to take into account the
interests of staff and suppliers as well as customers. The German legal
structure of staff – not necessarily trade union – representation on supervisory
boards as well as on remuneration committees is long overdue.
I see no evidence that such a reformed model of company law reduces either
investment or long-term profitability. It would stop some owners of companies
from taking short-term actions that take unacceptable risks with the long term
viability of business.
It is perfectly possible that the outcome of the two Commons committees
investigating BHS, just as with tax dodging in Panama, will be that nothing
illegal has taken place. So the people “who can just walk on to yachts” having
taken “money out of the business that wasn’t there to be taken” will simply
continue to do so, while those “who have mortgages and shop at Asda” will lose
their jobs and be forced to accept reduced pensions, shedding light on why
inequality is growing in the UK.