傳媒帝國大廈將傾
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????很多人對于魯伯特?默多克新聞集團曠日持久的丑聞并不感到驚訝。這些人包括投資者、保險商、律師以及那些曾過讀過調研公司The Corporate Library的“治理分析”報道的民眾。該公司對企業的治理評級有明確的標準，即從A到F。在過去的6年當中，新聞集團一直都被評為F——內爾?米勞稱：“沒有比這個級別更低的了。”米勞 1999年與他人合伙創立了The Corporate Library公司，并堅持認為管理“可以像證券一樣得到評級，從3A級到垃圾級。”新聞集團的總體風險，根據預測報告的說法是“非常高”。集體證券訴訟風險：“非常高”。目前，該公司丑聞所招致的官司已經堆成了山。 ????有人認為只有對商界現實一頭霧水的空想家們才會關注公司治理。然而，新聞集團（NWS）的案例證明，事實截然相反：公司治理是現實商業世界的根基所在。如果治理不過關，公司必然會出問題。對于新聞集團來說，這也是其麻煩不斷的癥結所在。 ????導致新聞集團管理不善、亂象叢生的原因很簡單——一人獨斷，越權行事。很多管理不善的公司采取的都是雙重股份制。新聞集團A級股占公司市值（近410億美元）的大約70%，但是A股持有者卻沒有投票權。只有占市值30%的B級股持有者才有投票權。魯伯特?默多克持有B級股近40%的股份，即擁有公司12%的股權，但是他卻能在公司呼風喚雨因為他可以決定公司董事會成員的人選。當然其他的B股股東（大約有1，300名左右）理論上也可以與他決裂，和他唱反調，但實際中這種事從未發生過。考慮到默多克的長期支持者當中有持有7%B級股的沙特阿瓦里德王子，這種事情就更不可能發生了。 ????維護新聞集團48，000名股東利益的終極重任最終落在了名為默多克的三名董事會成員（魯伯特和他的兒子詹姆士和拉克蘭；他女兒伊麗莎白將于明年加入董事會）、四位新聞集團雇員（首席運營官查斯?凱利，首席運營官大衛?德芙，高級執行副總裁喬伊爾?克蘭以及高級顧問亞瑟?塞斯肯德）兩位前新聞集團雇員和七名其他董事的肩上。這七名董事包括一位31歲的歌劇演員娜塔莉班?克羅夫特，她的家族曾是道瓊斯公司（Dow Jones）的擁有人，2007年新聞集團將其并購。新聞集團說她的“青春”和“女性視角”為董事會添色不少。在此等人的照料下，該公司股票讓投資者倍感失望實屬正常；該股過去15年當中在標準普爾500（S&P 500）的表現一直不佳。 ????該董事會符合薩班斯-奧克斯利法案（Sarbanes-Oxley Act）和納斯達克股票交易所的獨立要求。當然，如果你認為這個董事會并不獨立，這也完全可以理解。不管獨立與否，這已經無關緊要。從法律上來說，董事會可以炒魯伯特?默多克的魷魚。然而實際操作中，他可以炒董事會的魷魚，這一點董事會當然心知肚明。難怪公司在治理方面能獲得F評級殊榮。 ????這種管理的影響比我們想象的要更為嚴重和深遠。特拉華大學溫伯格公司治理研究中心（University of Delaware's John L Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance）主任查爾斯?埃爾森說，“在它催生的企業文化中，問責制沒有立足之地”。公司中，如果董事會忠實于股東意志，首席執行官隨時可以被炒；例如，英國石油（BP）董事會去年炒了托尼?荷沃德，惠普（Hewlett-Packard's ，HPQ）董事會炒了馬克?赫德。這樣，公司內部就會自上而下傳遞出這樣一個訊息：表現不好，就會被炒。但是在首席執行官能炒董事會魷魚的公司，這個訊息就變為：我們不對股東負責，我們只對一個人負責。也就是公司是人治，不是法治。 ????結果呢，看看過去幾年最為臭名遠揚的丑聞公司吧——安然（Enron）、世通（Worldcom）、南方保健（Healthsouth）、阿德菲亞傳播公司（Adelphia）、帕馬拉特公司（Parmalat）。這些公司與新聞集團有一個共同點，它們都是靠某個人憑一己之力白手起家，獲得巨大成功。然后，這個人通過各種手段，將所有大權攬入自己懷中。員工們覺得令他們感恩戴德的竟是一個全然無視公司管理制度獨裁者。結果，這些公司最終都給股東、雇員、客戶、供應商和社會帶來了毀滅性的打擊。 ????根據目前已確認的消息，丑聞已為新聞集團帶來了巨大的負面影響，而且遠非關閉《新聞世界報》這顆搖錢樹就能了事的。被警方沒收的筆記本中提及有成千上萬人的電話都曾被監聽——此事一旦確認，將意味著鋪天蓋地的訴訟。新聞集團已承認曾與警察有過金錢交易。按照幾位參議員的說法，這一點明顯違反了美國《反外國腐敗行為法案》（U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act）。如果新聞集團違法，該集團位于美國的27家電視臺的聯邦通訊委員會（FCC）牌照將岌岌可危。這并不是危言聳聽；20年前，雷電華公司（RKO General）被查出有行賄外國官員和其他惡劣違法行為，之后，該公司被吊銷了所有播放牌照。 ????新聞集團目前面臨的更大問題是，丑聞的影響到底到何處才是盡頭。公司官員一開始聲稱此事只牽扯到《世界新聞報》的某一個流氓記者。之后他們承認還牽扯到另外一些人，但是僅涉及電話竊聽事件，涉事報紙也只有一家。但是，《太陽報》（Sun）隨后也被卷入丑聞，并爆出警察受賄一事。目前，警方已逮捕了10名在職員工和前公司員工。然而，如果就此認定其余職員都如童子軍一般清白，則未免顯得太傻太天真。 ????有鑒于此，最近的丑聞也使公眾開始重新審視該公司旗下的美國新聞市場營銷集團（News America Marketing Group）。該集團主要為新聞及雜志制作獨立廣告插頁。幾年來，該集團因使用嚴重不正當手段一直遭到競爭對手的起訴。其中有一項起訴于2009年進行了庭審；僅僅兩天之后，新聞集團就以驚人的5億美元與原告達成庭外和解。令一場官司也于今年早些時候進行了庭審，一天后，新聞集團破財1.25億美元和解。 ????現在，至少三個國家，即英國、美國和澳大利亞的調查機構，正在細致、全面地梳理該公司的事務。然而調查結果只會讓投資者擔憂。自從7月初丑聞爆發以來，投資者已經讓新聞集團的市值損失了66億美元，顯示丑聞的影響遠遠超出它帶來的直接經濟損失。例如，如果美國聯邦調查局（FBI）查出新聞集團雇員曾竊聽過9/11受害者或家人的電話，美國公眾勢必怒不可遏。這對于默多克的至愛《華爾街日報》（Wall Street Journal）以及美國電影公司【20世紀福克斯（Twentieth Century Fox）和其他公司】、美國有線電視網【福克斯新聞頻道（Fox News），FX和其他電視臺】、美國電視臺和廣播網絡【福克斯（Fox）】來說都不是好消息。這些公司構成了新聞集團大部分利潤的主要來源。 ????接下來會怎么樣？在接到突如其來的調查和紛繁復雜的訴訟之后，董事會成員可能會想起代表全體股東的利益才是他們的法律義務。他們可能最終違抗默多克的指示，炒他的魷魚或將其發配至非執行主席級別，或重建公司已經支離破碎的治理機制。這一次，在全世界的眾目睽睽之下，正當默多克需要行使其特權炒董事會魷魚的時候，他卻不能這么做。或者，既然B級投票權股份已經上市交易（盡管交易量很少），那么有人就能借此通過古老的代理權之戰來重組董事會。 ????默多克一直辯稱新聞集團的治理信息已經公布于眾，投資者如不買賬可以不用為其股票掏腰包。事實確實如此，而且這也解釋了一項調查結果，即為何精明的機構投資商在雙重股份制公司的投資要大大少于他們在整體市場的投資。至于新聞集團的股東們，按照查爾斯?埃爾森的說法：“既然上了賊船，也就只能自認倒霉了。” ????新聞集團的丑聞進一步證實，治理不善就像地震：人們永遠無法預知它什么時候爆發，但是肯定知道它會在哪里爆發。而新聞集團的地震才剛剛開始。 |
????Some people aren't at all surprised by the unending scandal at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. They are the investors, insurers, lawyers, and others who had read the "Governance Analysis" report on the company from The Corporate Library, a research firm. The firm grades companies' governance from A to F, and for the past six years News Corp. has received an F -- "only because there is no lower grade," says Nell Minow, who co-founded The Corporate Library in 1999 on the premise that governance "can be rated like bonds, from triple-A to junk." News Corp.'s overall risk, says the prophetic report: "very high." Risk of class-action securities litigation: "very high." Scandal-related lawsuits are already piling up. ????For those who think corporate governance is the concern of prissy do-gooders who don't understand real-world business, News Corp. (NWS) is the latest example that the truth is just the opposite: Governance is the foundation of real-world business. If it isn't solid, trouble is inevitable. For News Corp., it's the reason the trouble is far from over. ????News Corp.'s variety of lousy governance is simple -- one man exerts control wildly out of proportion to his stake in the business. As at many companies with bad governance, the mechanism is dual-class stock. News Corp.'s class A shares account for about 70% of the company's market cap (recently $41 billion total) but have no voting power. Only class B shares, which account for the other 30% of the market cap, get to vote, and Rupert Murdoch has almost 40% of the class B shares. Economically he owns just 12% of the company, but he wields total control because he can elect all the directors. While the other class B shareholders (about 1,300 of them) could in theory gang up on him and vote against his wishes, in practice that doesn't happen. It's especially unlikely since long-time Murdoch supporter Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia owns 7% of the class B shares. ????Ultimate responsibility for protecting News Corp.'s 48,000 total shareholders thus rests with a board comprising three directors named Murdoch (Rupert plus sons James and Lachlan; daughter Elisabeth is scheduled to join next year), four additional News Corp. employees (COO Chase Carey, CFO David DeVoe, executive VP Joel Klein, and senior adviser Arthur Siskind), two former News Corp. employees, and seven other directors, including a 31-year-old opera singer, Natalie Bancroft, from the family that owned Dow Jones, which News Corp. bought in 2007. News Corp. says her "youth" and "female perspective" bring value to the board. Under such guardianship, it's unsurprising the stock has disappointed investors; it has underperformed the S&P 500 over the past five and 10 years. ????This board meets the independence requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Nasdaq, where the stock trades, but if it doesn't seem very independent to you, that's understandable. In any case, it doesn't matter. While legally the board can fire Rupert Murdoch, practically he can fire the board, and the board knows it. Truly the company has earned its F in governance. ????The effects are insidious and more far reaching than you might imagine. "It creates a culture with no accountability," says Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware's John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. In companies where directors are genuinely subject to the shareholders' will, CEOs get fired; BP's (BP) board fired Tony Hayward last year, for example, and Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ) board fired Mark Hurd. The message cascades down through the organization: Bad behavior gets you fired here. But at companies where the CEO can fire the board, a different message cascades down: We don't answer to the shareholders, we answer to just one person. It's the rule of man, not the rule of law. ????To see the results, consider the most infamous scandal companies of the past several years – Enron, Worldcom, Healthsouth, Adelphia, Parmalat. Like News Corp., each had risen from nothing to huge success under one man, and through various means he had maintained total effective control. Employees felt they were beholden to a person who was beyond outside governance. The results were devastating to shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, and communities. ????Based only on what has been confirmed, the scandal's potential damage to News Corp. is already considerable, beyond the closure of the highly profitable News of the World. Confiscated notebooks name thousands of people whose phones may have been hacked -- a staggering docket of lawsuits if hacking is confirmed. Payments to police officers, which, News Corp. has admitted, seems a clear violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, as several senators have observed. If News Corp. is guilty, the FCC licenses of its 27 U.S. television stations could be in peril. That's not a theoretical danger; RKO General had to give up all its broadcast licenses some 20 years ago after it was found to have bribed foreign officials and committed other unsavory acts. ????A large question for News Corp. now is how much further the scandal will extend. Company officials first maintained it ended with one rogue reporter at The News of the World. Then they acknowledged it was several but involved only phone hacking and only at that paper. Then the scandal spread to the Sun and to police bribery. With 10 employees or former employees arrested so far, it would seem foolish to assume now that all other employees have been behaving like Boy Scouts. ????With that in mind, recent events cast a new light on the company's News America Marketing Group, which produces free-standing ad inserts for newspapers and magazines and for years has been sued by competitors alleging grossly unfair practices. One of the suits went to trial in 2009; after two days of proceedings, News Corp. settled out of court for the stunning sum of $500 million. Another suit went to trial earlier this year, and after one day, News Corp. settled for $125 million. ????Now, investigators in at least three countries -- the U.K., the U.S., and Australia -- are combing carefully and widely through the company's affairs. What they might find seems to worry investors, who have clipped News Corp.'s market value by $6.6 billion since the scandal broke in early July, reflecting far more than the immediate economic damage. For example, if the FBI finds that News Corp. employees hacked the phones of 9/11 victims or their families, the American public's fury will know no bounds. That could be bad news for Murdoch's treasured Wall Street Journal plus his U.S. movie studios (Twentieth Century Fox and others), U.S. cable networks (Fox News, FX, and others), and U.S. TV stations and broadcast network (Fox), which together earn most of News Corp.'s profit. ????What's next? Suddenly under intense scrutiny and in the crosshairs of lawsuits, the directors may remember they have a legal duty to represent the interests of all shareholders. They could finally defy Murdoch, firing him or kicking him upstairs to non-executive chairman or otherwise rehabbing the company's tattered governance. With the world watching, Murdoch may feel that the one time he needs to exercise his power to fire the directors, he can't. Or, since the class B voting shares are publicly (though thinly) traded, someone could mount an old-fashioned proxy fight to reform the board. ????Murdoch has long argued that News Corp.'s governance is public information, and investors who don't like it needn't buy the stock. That's obviously true and perhaps explains why sophisticated institutional investors don't buy shares of companies with dual-class stock nearly as heavily as they invest in the overall market, according to research. News Corp.'s shareholders, says Charles Elson, "have no one to blame but themselves for buying this stock." ????The scandal is further evidence that governance disasters are like earthquakes: You can never predict when they'll happen, but you can predict pretty confidently where they'll happen. The trembling under News Corp. has only begun. |
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