Shareholder value产经-黄乐英语翻译接受修改.doc

Shareholder valueAnalyse this（电影：老大靠边闪）股东价值分析 The enduring power of the biggest idea in business商业最高理念的持久性Apr 2nd 2016|From the print editionWHAT is the most influential contemporary book about the world economy? An obvious choice is “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, a 696-page analysis of inequality by Thomas Piketty, a French economist. There is another candidate: “Valuation”, a 825-page manual on corporate finance and shareholder value. Some 700,000 copies of it encumber the bookshelves of MBA students, investors and chief executives around the globe.哪本书是当下最富影响力的世界经济书籍？一个显而易见的选择是二十一世纪资本论，这是一本由法国经济学家托马斯皮克提所作的长达696页的对不平等进行分析的书。还有另一本候选书籍：估值，一本825页的关于公司财务和股东价值的手册。该书在全世界的发行总量大约有70万册，MBA学生，投资者和首席执行官是该书的主要读者。Inequality and shareholder value are linked in the minds of many folk, who blame investors and managers for stagnant wages and financial crises. Ruthless corporations are a big theme in Americas election campaign. The near-collapse of Valeant, a drugs firm, seems to illustrate a toxic business culture. Its shares have fallen by 73% this year. It is restating its accounts and is in negotiations with its lenders and under investigation by regulators. Valeant describes itself as “bringing value to our shareholders”. While there is no indication of fraudulent or illegal practice, the company could end up joining a pantheon of corporate fiascos that includes Enron (which pledged to “create significant value for our shareholders”), Lehman Brothers, (“maximising shareholder value”) and MCI WorldCom (“a proven record of shareholder value creation”).在许多人眼中，不平等和股东价值是联系在一起的，他们会因为工资停滞和金融危机而指责投资者和管理者。无情的企业是美国选战中的一个大的话题。Valeant（一家药品公司）公司的几近崩溃看似能说明一种有毒的商业文化。这家公司的股价今年下跌了73%。它正在重新编制财务报表，与债主谈判，还要接受监管部门的调查。Valeant公司自我标榜将“给我们的股东带来价值”。虽然没有迹象表明该公司有欺诈或非法行为，但他们仍可能最终加入失败企业的长名单中，这些企业包括安然公司（这承诺“为我们的股东创造显著的价值”）、雷曼兄弟（“股东价值最大化”）和世通公司（“创造出可信的股东价值”）。Yet the sixth edition of “Valuation”*, published last year, a quarter of a century after the first, is a reminder of why shareholder value is still the most powerful idea in business and why many criticisms thrown at it are unfair. The origins of the doctrine lie in the 1950s and 1960s, when Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller, two scholars, showed that a firms value is independent of its capital structure and dividend policy. That inspired a new framework for analysis, popularised in the 1980s by Joel Stern, a consultant, Alfred Rappaport, another scholar, and McKinsey & Co, a consultancy, among others.然而第一版估值出版后的25年，去年出版的第六版估值提醒我们：为什么股东价值仍然是商业中最强大的理念，为什么许多对它的批评是不公平的。股东价值最大化这一原则源于20世纪五六十年代，当时，莫迪利亚尼和默顿米勒两位学者提出，一个公司的价值独立于其资本结构和股利政策。这激发了一个新的分析框架并在上个世纪80年代由乔尔斯特恩（顾问）、阿尔弗雷德拉帕波特（学者）、以及麦肯锡公司（一家顾问公司）发扬光大。 Company analysis was antediluvian until then. Models were scribbled on paper covered in correction fluid. Profits were cheered, without much regard to the book-cooking done, risks taken and capital used to achieve them. The worth of a firm was estimated by placing its profits or book value on a multiple, whose value was best decided after a three-Martini lunch.在此之前，公司分析方法已经变得陈腐不堪。分析模型只不过是一些草草涂写在涂满修正液纸上的东西。它受利润所驱使，对账务操纵、承担风险及用以实现该利润的资本考虑甚少。一个公司的价值可以通过它的利润或账面价值的乘数来估计，而乘数的价值往往在一顿丰盛的午餐后就被确定下来。“Valuation” and a few books like it, offered new tools. Cashflow, not easy-to-manipulate accounting profit, mattered. An activity only made sense if capital employed by it made a decent return, judged by its cashflow relative to a hurdle rate (the risk-adjusted return its providers of capital expected). Two newish spreadsheet programs, Lotus 123 and Microsoft Excel, let analysts forecast firms long-term cashflows and gauge their present value today.估值和其它一些类似的书提供了一种新的分析工具。现金流这一不容易被操纵的会计利润非常重要。一项活动只有在其所运用的资金能够取得可观的回报（用其相对于收益率的现金流来判断）时才有意义，而判断回报是否可观的标准是对现金流与要求报酬率（资本提供者预期可以得到的、经风险调整后的回报率）进行比较。分析师一般使用两款较新的电子表格程序：莲花123和微软Excel来预测企业的长期现金流并计算其现值。This breathed fresh life into an old ideathat shareholders had the whip hand. Technically, shareholders do not own a company: the firm is a legal person and a share represents a bundle of entitlements to dividends and voting powers. But a doctrine of “shareholder primacy” had been outlined in 1919, when a Michigan court observed that “a business corporation is organised and carried on primarily for the profit of stockholders”. The new science of corporate finance revolutionised the pursuit of that goal. Managers realised that by working out where firms employed capital and using it more efficiently they could increase their value. Outsiders had a methodology with which to second-guess incompetent managers.这为一个传统理念（股东们处于支配地位）注入了新的活力。从技术上讲，股东不拥有公司：公司是一个法人，一股代表了一系列权利，包括获得股息和拥有投票权。但是，1919年，一个“股东至上主义”的原则出现了，当时密歇根州的一家法院认为：“商业公司主要是为了股东的利益而组织和运行的”。新公司金融学彻底改变了对这一目标的追求。管理者意识到，通过计算出企业在哪里运用资本并且更高效率地使用它，这样可以提高他们的价值。外部人也拥有一种方法用以预测不称职管理者的方法。These ideas lit up corporate America first. In the late 1980s and 1990s, profits relative to GDP were at historic lows and global competition intensified. Managers used the methodology of shareholder value to break up conglomerates and ditch weak business lines. The financial industry was deregulated, creating an army of number-crunchers to scrutinise firms.这些理念首先推动了美国企业的发展。20世纪80年代末及90年代，美国企业的利润与国内生产总值的比率处于历史低点，且当时全球竞争加剧。管理者运用股东价值的方法分拆企业集团，并放弃薄弱的业务线。金融业放松管制，创造了一群统计人员来审查公司。 By the turn of the century, big European firms were on board. Germanys system of cross-shareholdings between financial and industrial firms was unwound: investors could buy the same exposure and did not need companies tying up capital. The jewels of French industry were privatised and their bosses obliged to think of profitability as well as impressing politicians.在世纪之交，欧洲大公司走上了这条路。德国金融公司和其工业企业之间的交叉持股制度是松散的：投资者可以承担同样的风险，而且不占用公司的资本。法国工业中的重要企业被私有化，他们的老板不得不考虑盈利且与政治家处好关系。Today shareholder value rules business. Abenomics, the plan to revive Japans economy, involves prodding firms to use capital better. Fosun, a private Chinese firm, devotes a page of its annual report to calculating the value it claims to have created. The only boardrooms that shareholder value has not reached are those of Chinas state-run firms, whose party-appointed bosses look baffled if asked about return on capital and buzz for more tea.现如今股东价值支配着商业行为。计划重振日本经济的安倍经济学包含如何促进企业更好地利用资本的策略。复星公司（中国的一家私营企业）在其年度报告中用了一页的篇幅来计算了其声称的已创造价值。股东价值没有实现的公司是那些国企，这些由党任命的老板在被问到关于资本的回报问题时看起来比较困惑，并且只会要更多的茶水。Value cremation价值消失Yet at this moment of ascendancy in the business world, shareholder value is under fierce attack beyond it, fuelled by a sense that Western economies are not delivering rising prosperity to most people. The criticism falls into two categories. The first is that shareholder value is a licence for bad conduct, including skimping on investment, exorbitant pay, high leverage, silly takeovers, accounting shenanigans and a craze for share buy-backs, which are running at $600 billion a year in America.然而，正当股东价值至上原则在商界占据支配地位之时，它也面临着前所未有的猛烈攻击，其原因在于，从某种意义上说，西方经济不会给大部分人带来持久的繁荣。对它的批评分为两类。首先，第一类批评认为股东价值是一种不良行为的许可证，这些行为包括缩减投资，过高的薪酬，高杠杆，愚蠢的收购，财务欺诈，热衷于股票回购等，在美国，这些行为每年涉及的资金规模高达6000亿美元。These things happen, but none has much to do with shareholder value. A premise of “Valuation” is that there is no free lunch. A firms worth is based on its long-term operating performance, not financial engineering. It cannot boost its value much by manipulating its capital structure. Optical changes to accounting profits dont matter; cashflow does (a lesson WorldCom and Enron ignored). Leverage boosts headline rates of return but, reciprocally, raises risks (as Lehman found). Buy-backs do not create value, just transfer it between shareholders. Takeovers make sense only if the value of synergies exceeds the premium paid (as Valeant discovered). Pay packages that reward boosts to earnings-per-share and short-term share-price pops are silly.这些事情经常出现，但没有一个与股东价值有关。估值所讲理论的一个前提是天下没有免费的午餐。一个公司的价值是基于其长期经营业绩，而不是金融工程。它不能通过操纵资本结构来增加更多的价值。我们能看到的会计利润的变化并不重要；现金流才是重要的（世通和安然对此视而不见，这是一个教训）。杠杆提升总的回报率，但同时增加了风险（雷曼兄弟公司破产即是一例）。回购不创造价值，它只是股权在在股东之间的转让。收购只有当协同效应的价值超过支付的溢价时才有意义（正如Valeant公司所揭示的那样）。用一揽子薪酬对那些提高每股收益和短期股票价格的员工进行奖励的行为是愚蠢的。Outbreaks of madness in markets tend to happen because people are breaking the rules of shareholder value, not enacting them. This is true of the internet bubble of 1999-2000, the leveraged buy-out boom of 2004-08 and the banking crash. That such fiascos occur is a failure of governance and human nature, not of an idea.市场往往会变得疯狂，因为人们目前的所作所为不是制定股东价值至上的原则，而是在破坏这一规则。这在1999-2000年的互联网泡沫，2004-08年的杠杆收购繁荣和银行业崩溃中显得尤其真实。这一惨败发生的原因是监管与人性的失败，而不是（股东价值至上）这一理念的失败。The second criticism is weightier: that firms should be run for all stakeholders, not just shareholders. the goals of equity-holders and others are aligned. A firm that sufficiently annoys customers, counterparties and staff cannot stay in business. Some bosses, such as Paul Polman of Unilever, and Joe Kaeser at Siemens, say that pursuing social and financial objectives is consistent. But it is disingenuous to pretend conflicts do not arise. A firm with a loss-making factory cannot shut it without destroying jobs.第二个批评更严厉：公司应该为所有利益相关者运作，而不仅仅是为股东而运作。传统观点认为：股东的目标和其他利益相关者目标是一致的。完全得罪客户、交易对手和工作人员的公司根本无法在业内立足。某些老板（如联合利华的保罗波尔曼和西门子的乔凯撒）说追求社会目标与追求经济目标是一致的。但是对冲突的爆发视而不见也是虚伪的。一个拥有亏损工厂的公司无法在关闭该工厂的同时不制造出新的失业。The trouble is identifying a goal that could replace the pursuit of shareholder value. If firms had to promote employment they would be less productive and riskier borrowers, as China is discovering. The objective of maximising wealth is deeply embedded in the global savings system, with asset managers obliged to protect clients money. Asking firms to adopt objectives to solve inequality loads a giant problem on their shoulders.麻烦之处在于确定一个可以取代股东价值的追求目标