外文翻译---英格兰足球俱乐部的公司治理

中文 3130 字 本科毕业论文（设计） 外 文 翻 译 The Corporate Governance of Professional Football Clubs in England We analyze the corporate governance of professional football clubs operating in England’s Premier and Football Leagues. Good corporate governance is essential if clubs are to be managed effectively and to survive in the difficult economic circumstances surrounding the football industry. The past couple of years have been especially testing, as Football League clubs have had to deal with the aftermath of the collapse of the ITV digital contract. Our analysis reveals that while there are some noticeable improvements in governance standards, many clubs would benefit from following best practice guidelines on information disclosure, the appointment of directors, board composition, induction and training of directors, risk management and consultation with stakeholders. Despite improvement in some areas over the past three years, standards of corporate governance in football clubs are significantly below those of listed companies as a whole and there is thus considerable need for improvement. The peculiar economics of football The peculiar economics of professional sports leagues has been long been recognized (see Neale, 1964).Traditionally, the essence of the problem was seen to lie in the fact that sports leagues and the individual clubs that make up the league provide a joint product that depends on effective cooperation between competing clubs. Clubs agree to join and to be regulated by a league because co-operation in the supply of a joint product increases the economic value of the product supplied by each individual club. The output of the league and its constituent members is maximized when there is some degree of competitive balance in the league so that the outcome of matches is uncertain. A second major peculiarity relates to the need to balance financial sustainability on the one hand with playing success on the other. This latter imperative introduces an incentive to “invest” (or gamble) on success, through buying players and paying high player wages to attract and retain the best players. This may provide part of the reason； at least, for most professional football clubs in England being unprofitable, since there will be an incentive to invest any putative profits even before these appear in the balance sheet. At the extreme it can lead to the sort of debt-fuelled expenditure that Leeds United Football Club embarked upon in the early 1990s – “living the dream”, as the then Chief Executive described it. This urge on the part of boards to seek playing success, potentially at the expense of outside shareholders and lenders, places a heavier burden than in other industries on corporate governance institutions as a means of protecting outside providers of finance. A final major peculiarity – in addition to many others perhaps less fundamental differences – lies in the “labor market”, both with the way that players are treated in the company’s balance sheet and the effects of the above competitive pressures on player salaries. In Europe over the past few years, regulatory change in the form of the “Bosman ruling”, giving greater freedom to players to move between clubs, combined with the rise of broadcasting revenues into the game, have led to huge increases in player salaries, at least in the top divisions. All these pressures make all the more important the need for good governance at clubs. The temptation to “live the dream” needs to be kept in check by proper auditing and reporting mechanisms. The need to maintain league balance requires a degree of commitment to common regulatory arrangements, for example with the collective selling of broadcasting rights at present. And the pressure on wages has led to individual clubs and now the Football League introducing guidelines to prevent player wages taking too great a proportion of turnover It is to check the robustness of corporate governance procedures at football clubs, and to consider how well these are managing to deal with the issues that these clubs face, that we have been surveying on an annual basis the corporate governance practices of professional football clubs in England over the past three years. Our survey of corporate governance practices at football clubs The analysis in this paper is based on the following data and information sources: I. The results from our questionnaire survey of all clubs in the English Premier and Football Leagues, including those that had been relegated to the Conference League since 2002. The survey was conducted between May and September 2003. Of the 95 clubs surveyed, 53 responded: a response rate of over 56 per cent, which is extremely high for an in-depth postal survey of this kind. ii. The results from our questionnaire survey of supporter groups, including all supporters’ trusts at English Premier and Football League clubs. Of the 100 supporters’ trusts surveyed, 51 responded, giving a response rate of 51 per cent, which is high for an in-depth postal survey of this kind. iii. Follow-up interviews with selected clubs and supporters’ trusts. iv. Analysis of the corporate governance statements and Annual Reports of clubs listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), AIM and OFEX. v. The results from PIRC’s analysis of the corporate governance statements of all LSE listed companies published in their December 2002 Annual Review of Corporate Governance vi. The collation of financial accounts and performance contained in the latest Deloitte and Touch Annual Review of Football Finance. Our dual surveys of clubs and supporters’ trusts provide comparative data showing analysis and insights from both perspectives. This paper reports results from our third annual review of the corporate governance of professional football clubs based on our dual survey methodology. This paper therefore draws upon a longitudinal data set covering football clubs and supporters’ trusts for these three years. We have provided where appropriate historical comparisons to identify trends in corporate governance in professional football. Assessing and managing risk The Turnbull Guidance was introduced to provide assistance to companies on the types of internal controls they should have in place to comply with the Accountability