Financialization of companies and remuneration of executives in Quebec and Canada

This article aims to present some recent developments of the corporation under the financialization of the economy, the transformation of its control's mechanisms and the reconfiguration of the relationships between managerial and financial factions of the business elite that this process involves. Descriptive statistical analysis about the compensation of the Canadian and Quebec business managers led the authors to assert that financial forms of compensation (stock options and deferred share units) represent a financial rather than an industrial pattern of the integration of managers inside economic circuits. This results challenge the theory of the separation between control and ownership as the managers are, by financial incentives, pushed to redefine the growth objectives based on shareholder value. The financialization of the corporation's governance has the effect of renewing the precedence of financial conventions in companies, as well as to transform executive managers into industrial managers and financial players.