Les parachutes dorés sont-ils (vraiment) contraires à l'éthique ?

Even though golden parachutes have been strongly criticized since the beginning of the financial crisis, do we necessarily have to conclude that they are unethical instruments and that they should be forbidden? The aim of this paper is to answer this question by assessing the use of Golden Parachutes from an ethical perspective, with an approach that combines a conceptual framework borrowed to moral philosophy, with a review of previous studies carried out in finance in the last fifteen years. To this end, we compare two moral theories traditionally used in debates devoted to ethics, that it is to say deontologism and consequentialism. Deontologism is defined as an ethics of intention and invites us, therefore, to analyse the intention of the protagonists at the origin of the Golden Parachutes. On the other hand, consequentialism is defined as an ethics of action leading us to analyse the consequences of the implementation of Golden Parachutes for all the stakeholders. The analysis carried out highlights the ambiguous status of the use of Golden Parachutes and emphasizes in particular their potential utility for shareholders. Neither the deontological approach nor the consequentialist approach allow us to conclude to decide on the deeply iniquitous nature of Golden Parachutes, which are originally a mechanism intended to protect shareholders against managers' opportunism. If abuses abuses exist and justify a drastic monitoring of Golden Parachutes implementation conditions, we must not necessarily conclude that they must be purely and simply banned.