L’organisation des activités des entreprises a pris un tournant majeur avec l’apparition de l’entreprise réseau. Celle-ci a éclipsé l’entreprise traditionnelle, hiérarchisée et unifiée dont l’idée fondamentale était l’intégration verticale de toutes les étapes de fabrication. La concurrence est d’une telle férocité qu’il est difficile pour une seule entreprise de supporter les coûts de gestion et de contrôle de toutes ses activités. L’entreprise réseau repose sur la création de relations stratégiques avec des prestataires spécialisés en leur externalisant les activités périphériques qui ne font pas partie de son coeur de métier. Ce nouveau mode d’organisation se matérialise par la conclusion d’un contrat de prestations logistiques qui est dépourvu de qualification et de régime juridiques spécifiques. Sa pleine expression se trouve dans la notion de logistique encore inconnue de la majorité des juristes. Rares sont les juristes qui ont analysé le contrat de prestations logistiques ou qui se sont prononcés de manière irrévocable sur le traitement juridique à lui accorder. L’article traite des fondements organisationnels et logistiques du contrat de prestations logistiques et s’intéresse également à son traitement juridique au Québec et en France.

This article uses the Canadian environment, where French civil law in the province of Quebec coexists with common law in the rest of Canada (denoted as bijural), to test the thesis of the neutrality of the legal system with regard to financial reporting quality. This single-country design allows for a better control over other factors that influence financial reporting quality. The French civil law environment appears to encourage firms to publish accounting data of better quality due to the greater liability risk faced by auditors and corporate directors under that regime. These findings, based on ten years of data and seven attributes of financial reporting quality, are robust to different matching procedures and model specifications. This research contributes to the current debates in Canada as to whether financial market regulation under French civil law and common law jurisdictions should be unified under a single common law national securities regulator. At the broader level, the results support claims that a more in-depth understanding of the implementation of civil law and common law is needed rather than gross generalization about the two systems. These results especially call into question that common law regimes are unambiguously superior to civil law regimes in encouraging high quality financial reports.

In the wake of the financial crisis, Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) have been criticized for having played a significant role in the market turmoil. Numerous reports have identified failures on the part of CRAs that have affected the quality and integrity of the rating process. In light of the critiques, a strong consensus has emerged among policymakers that regulatory intervention is needed. In Canada, the European Union and the United States, policymakers have opted for registration systems. Three major areas of reform should be pursued. The first pertains to the elimination of regulatory references to ratings. The second area relates to the development of a due diligence obligation for institutional investors with respect to the creditworthiness of issuers. The final area of reform concerns the disclosure of information on underlying assets by issuers of structured finance products. Given that these reforms imply important changes to the regulatory landscape, an incremental approach is the preferable route.

In this article, we reexamine the law and finance theory in the Canadian context, characterized by a dichotomy in the legal traditions that govern incorporation law across provinces. We specifically examine the relation between incorporation law, corporate ownership structure, and firm value, taking into account the endogeneity of ownership structure. Using a sample of 181 Canadian firms between 2002 and 2005, we show that firms from Quebec mostly choose to incorporate under the federal law (CBCA), perceived as more protective of shareholder rights, rather than under the provincial law (QCA). Our 2SLS regressions show that Quebec firms incorporated under the QCA tend to have more concentrated ownership and that ownership concentration is negatively related to firm value (Tobin's Q). These results are in line with the previous literature, which, in different pieces, has identified the positive relationship between less stringent legal environment and ownership concentration, as well as the negative relationship between ownership concentration and firm value. In this study, we formalize these relationships while taking into consideration the fact that firm value could also influence ownership concentration, as shown by Cho (1998). These results take on a particular importance as many researchers and organizations dedicated to the protection of investors, in Europe and in many countries around the world, have criticized the existence of ownership concentration and excess voting rights (wedge). These results thus reinforce the need for better corporate governance regulations to minimize the risks of minority shareholders expropriation.

La Porta et al.'s [La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., Shleifer, A., & Vishny, R. (1998). Law and finance. Journal of Political Economy, 106(6), 1113–1155] theory of law and finance predicts that minority controlled ownership structures, i.e. those that allow voting rights to exceed cash-flow rights, are more numerous in legal contexts that do not adequately protect investors against expropriation attempts by dominant shareholders. The purpose of our study is to test this prediction in a unique environment, that of the province of Quebec. Quebec owes its distinct status to the fact that it is the only jurisdiction among the 10 provinces of Canada to operate under civil law, while the other nine provinces operate under common law. We show that, in comparison to those in the rest of Canada, dominant shareholders in Quebec corporations hold a higher percentage of voting rights, with a wider gap between their voting rights and cash-flow rights.

Stock exchanges are an important determinant of the competitiveness of Canadian capital markets. Regulators have recognized this fact when they have approved the consolidation of Canadian stock exchanges in 1999. The specialization of stock exchanges purported to enable them to cater more effectively to issuers and investors, and thereby to face the competition from foreign-based exchanges. Indeed, the competition has increased as foreign stock exchanges increasingly seek to attract listing from Canadian firms. In this respect, Canadian issuers' interest in listing on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a testament of this growing competition. Created in 1995 to allow companies to access public capital with a reduced regulatory burden, AIM has been extremely successful in attracting investors and issuers, including more recently a number of Canadian public companies. The attractiveness of AIM is intriguing for policymakers interested in the competitiveness of Canadian securities markets. Despite the interest generated by AIM, few studies have been devolved to this specialized stock exchange, either from an economic or regulatory perspective. And none of the existing studies has sought to analyze the relevance of the AIM model for Canadian stock exchanges, and, more broadly, the competitiveness of Canadian capital markets. From this perspective, the following analysis seeks to fill this research gap by providing a better understanding of AIM. Specifically, the objectives of this article are two-fold. First, this article examines the extent to which AIM has been successful with Canadian issuers. Second, it discusses whether the AIM model is informative for the regulatory approach followed by Canadian stock exchanges.

Résumé La réforme actuelle, qui vise l’amélioration du système de gouvernance canadien, a tendance à réduire cet objectif à une question de réglementation destinée à protéger les investisseurs. Dans cet article, nous faisons aussi ressortir un enjeu éthique important de cette réforme pour les entreprises et la profession comptable en proposant la lecture suivante des événements. En adoptant une approche permissive fondée sur l’autoréglementation, la première vague de réformes consécutive aux rapports Dey et Saucier laissait en théorie et en pratique beaucoup d’espace à l’éthique «au-delà de la réglementation» dans le système de gouvernance canadien. La deuxième vague de réformes, lancée dans la foulée de la loi américaine Sarbanes-Oxley, remet en question cette approche permissive en suivant une voie plus impérative. En leur retirant une partie importante de leur pouvoir d’autoréglementation, elle modifie ainsi la responsabilisation éthique des entreprises et des cabinets d’audit en matière de gouvernance.

La présente étude a pour objet de mieux comprendre le recours en levée du voile corporatif par l’analyse des décisions rendues par les tribunaux relativement à l’article 317 du Code civil du Québec sur une période de dix ans, soit de 1994 à 2004. Cette étude prend la forme non seulement d’une analyse exégétique des décisions, mais également d’une analyse statistique destinée à mettre en lumière avec plus de rigueur les tendances jurisprudentielles. Elle permet d’observer que les tribunaux font preuve de déférence à l’égard du principe de la responsabilité limitée et considèrent la levée du voile corporatif comme une sanction d’exception. Cela ressort du taux général de levée du voile corporatif qui est inférieur à celui qui est constaté dans d’autres juridictions de common law. Durant la période étudiée, les craintes exprimées par les commentateurs relativement à l’érosion du principe de la personnalité juridique distincte de la société par actions ne refétaient pas la réalité. Plus particulièrement, les résultats de l’étude montrent que les motifs invoqués pour procéder à la levée du voile corporatif sont les principaux déterminants de la décision des tribunaux d’appliquer l’article 317. Les dimensions factuelles et légales du litige exercent une influence marginale sur la probabilité de levée du voile corporatif. Parmi les motifs invoqués, la fraude et la dérogation à une règle d’ordre public se démarquent par leur impact significatif sur la probabilité de soulèvement du voile corporatif

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role in the Canadian economy. While the growth and success of these enterprises do not depend solely on financial support, access to financing is critical for their expansion. In this respect, public equity financing performs a crucial function among the various sources of capital in the funding of growing SMEs. From this perspective, the recent restructuring of Canadian stock exchanges which has lead to the creation of a junior stock exchange is commendable. Appropriately designed, a junior stock market can enhance the accessibility of public equity financing for SMEs by giving them access to a liquid secondary market. However, if it is to significantly improve the financing conditions of SMEs, the creation of a junior exchange must be accompanied by a revision of the current regulatory framework governing initial public offerings. As this paper shows, current securities regulation impacts on SMEs' ability to raise public equity capital. On the one hand, regulation enacts requirements which tend to burden excessively small issuers. On the other hand, it fails to correct market imperfections which raise the cost of capital for SMEs. In this context, this paper argues for reforms that will contribute to the implementation of a cost effective regulatory regime adapted to the needs and characteristics of smaller issuers.

The significant role which small and medium-sized firms play in the economy depends to a great extent on their ability, once established, to grow. While the growth and success of these enterprises depends on various factors, access to appropriate financing is critical for their expansion. In this respect, it is widely recognized that public equity financing performs a crucial function among the various sources of capital in the funding of growing SMEs. Unfortunately, as many have noted, small and medium-sized enterprises seeking to tap public equity financing face significant hurdles that restrain the accessibility of this source of capital. Since the beginning of the last decade, information technology, especially the Internet, has been profoundly affecting financial markets. Although the influence of technological advance is far-reaching, one of the most interesting impacts of Internet technology is that it can offer new potential for smaller issuers to raise capital by enhancing the informational and operational efficiency of the market. However, recent trends in the use of technology in the primary market raise tensions with traditional securities law concepts. If they are to foster capital formation, securities regulators will need to be more sensitive to the regulatory challenges of this changing technological environment. In this respect, it will be argued that the regulatory regime can be adapted to respond to technological change without jeopardizing investor protection and market confidence.

L’objectif du présent texte est de mettre en relief la pertinence de la théorie du réseau de contrats pour le droit québécois et canadien des sociétés par actions. Dans la première partie, nous présenterons la théorie du réseau de contrats et son incidence sur la conception du rôle de la législation sur les sociétés. Dans la seconde partie, nous aurons recours à ce cadre théorique pour discuter de la nature du devoir de prudence et diligence des administrateurs qui est édicté par la législation sur les sociétés canadienne et québécoise.

Les vérificateurs sont appelés à jouer un rôle crucial pour le bon fonctionnement des marchés financiers et la protection des intérêts des épargnants. Par le contrôle qu’ils exercent sur la fiabilité de l’information divulguée auprès des investisseurs, ces professionnels sont présumés pouvoir rendre compte de la qualité de l’information des entreprises avec indépendance, objectivité et intégrité. Depuis la récente débâcle de plusieurs grandes sociétés américaines, la confiance accordée à la fonction des vérificateurs a toutefois été fortement ébranlée. L’objet du présent article est d’examiner l’environnement institutionnel et juridique dans lequel les vérificateurs évoluent actuellement au Canada pour faire ressortir les divers facteurs qui peuvent influer sur le comportement de ces professionnels, plus particulièrement au regard de leurs obligations d’indépendance, d’objectivité et d’intégrité. Cet examen met en évidence l’existence d’un grand nombre de variables d’ordre économique et juridique qui peuvent inciter les professionnels à se conformer ou non à ces obligations.