The Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) announced that the third Corporate Governance Evaluation has been completed and released the results on April 14, 2017. A total of 1,496 companies, 843 TWSE listed companies and 653 TPEx listed companies, were evaluated. This year's evaluation released the full results of TWSE/TPEx listed companies according to the corporate governance roadmap and divided those companies into seven groups by score, Top 5%, Top 6% to 20%, 21% to 35%, 36% to 50%, 51% to 65%, 66% to 80%, and 81% to 100%.
　
TWSE stated that more and more companies are voluntarily adopting corporate governance best practices, including appointing independent directors, establishing audit committees, and implementing electronic voting. Therefore, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have delivered significantly improved results this year. Moreover, compared to the 2015 evaluation, the list of companies in the top 20% contains 40 new entries this year, while the list of companies in the top 5% contains 16 new entries. The replacement ratio is 24% and 37%, respectively. It shows that listed companies have been paying close attention to corporate governance evaluation, which is bringing out the expected results of healthy competition.
　
TWSE further stated that since the implementation of corporate governance evaluation in 2014, TWSE/TPEx listed companies have been making improvement in various aspects of corporate governance, for example, regarding the aspects of shareholders’ rights. In 2016, the number of companies that adopted voting by poll or electronic voting increased by 68% and 105%, respectively; the number of companies that mandated a director or supervisor candidate nomination system in their articles of incorporation increased by 43%. On the aspect of the board of directors, the number of companies that have independent directors and an audit committee have increased by 17% and 35%, respectively; as to information disclosure, the number of companies that filed their financial statements for the previous year by the end of February has grown to 123 in 2017, compared to only 32 in 2014. In addition, the number of companies that prepare corporate social responsibility reports has grown to 364. All of the data above reflects the fact that TWSE/TPEx listed companies are showing a more proactive attitude toward adopting corporate governance best practices. In the CG Watch 2016, Taiwan corporate governance is ranked fourth among 11 Asian markets, following Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. Taiwan is two places up from where it was in 2014 and is also the country with the greatest improvement. The efforts made by the listed companies in Taiwan are fully reflected in improved corporate governance practices in the country as a whole and are now widely recognized.
　
To encourage top performing companies, TWSE and TPEx plan to hold an award ceremony in May to honor the Top 5% companies (43 from TWSE and 33 from TPEx). The results of the 2016 Corporate Governance Evaluation can be found on the Corporate Governance Center website (http://cgc.twse.com.tw/evaluationCorp/listCh) and the SFI website under the Corporate Governance Evaluation (http://www.sfi.org.tw/finance/finance1/finance1_1). The results are also available through a link from the Market Observation Post System (http://mops.twse.com.tw/mops/web/index) for easy access.