Page 214 - Crisis Communication Practical PR Strategies

Risk Managers 195
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essary to answer the huge number of e-mails pouring in. As an
example, when the Michelin-equipped teams refused to participate in
the Formula 1 US Grand Prix in June 2005, visits to the Michelin
internet site multiplied by eight. The company received 2,000 e-mails
in a week, when normally it receives 1,000 per year on this subject.
This suggests that companies may even want to step up their corporate
communication to corporate interaction.

Company governance: a new source

of crises

It is not easy to define company governance; it probably varies from
one country to the next. Generally speaking, we can attempt to define
it as a renewed shareholder counter-power. It is as much based on
more active board roles as it is a way for shareholders to monitor com-
panies. It is a type of management that looks after shareholder value
and actively participates in meetings and possible legal proceedings as
a means of taking care of shareholders’ rights.
Company governance can be thought of as a balance between
unconditional shareholder power and managerial excesses. Here is a
quote about governance as seen by the French. A French company’s
management ‘see it as a means of contesting through which their
authority is put into question by Anglo-Saxon troublemakers, and
reported by ignorant journalists and conference organizers at a loss
for real ideas’.
Despite the resistance of some company leaders, company gover-
nance has become a new source of crises for which organizations and
risk managers are not always prepared and often find themselves at a
loss to respond. Companies as well known as Suez, Carrefour, Shell
and Vinci have all recently experienced this. The following illustrates
how brand risk is more and more linked to financial risk.
The US Sarbannes–Oxley financial transparency act is applicable to
all US company subsidiaries throughout the world. However, applying
this law, especially in Europe, is not all that easy. For example, in
France it clashes with the policies of the CNIL (Commission Nationale
de Informatique et des Libertés). Beau Fixe has had to intervene twice
this year for subsidiaries of US groups when their factories went on
strike, pitting French law against US law, calling on support from the
CNIL. A solution was reached with the French authorities. Only
recently, both Dupont de Nemours and McDonalds were judged in
France on this subject. We are sliding toward more and more legal