The Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) and the Taipei Exchange (TPEx) co-hosted the 4th Corporate Governance Evaluation Award Ceremony, which took place on the 9th floor of Taipei 101 at 3pm on May 29, 2018. Awards were presented to 43 TWSE-listed companies and 34 TPEx-listed companies that ranked in the top 5% of the evaluation in recognition of their achievements. The TWSE and TPEx invited FSC Chairman Wellington L. Koo to give the opening speech and present awards at the ceremony. Heads of the competent authorities and securities institutions were also been invited to the event.
　
The TWSE announced that the 2017 Corporate Governance Evaluation contained 99 indicators in five aspects, which are protection of shareholders' rights and interests, equal treatment of shareholders, enhancing board composition and operation, increasing information transparency, and implementation of corporate social responsibility. The indicators were designed to measure the overall corporate governance performance of a company. The results were published on April 30, 2018. Compared to the 2016 evaluation results, 14 new TWSE-listed companies and five  new TPEx-listed companies entered the top 5% and the replacement ratio is 33% and 15%, respectively.
　
The TWSE also explained that the indicators in the evaluation are reviewed every year, and constantly refined according to regulatory amendments, key government policies and global corporate governance trends. Regarding employment protection, for example, the 2017 evaluation contained 4 indicators related to employee rights, including whether employee benefits and related practices were disclosed in annual reports and on websites and whether competent authorities had imposed any disciplinary actions for major labor disputes. These indicators accounted for 4% of the total indicators. There was also a new indicator added for the year 2018, which asks whether a company has implemented a policy to adequately reflect business performance or results in employee remuneration. As a result, these indicators now account for 6% of total indicators, and serve to urge companies to pay attention to employee welfare. Under the new Corporate Governance Roadmap (2018-2020), more weight will be shifted gradually to qualitative indicators in order to enable the evaluation system to better reflect and measure different circumstances in different companies. Furthermore, given that corporate governance and internal control related regulatory requirements vary by sector, releasing evaluation results by sector or other appropriate classification will be assessed in the future.
　
Through the Corporate Governance Evaluation, the TWSE hopes to identify companies that are constantly trying to improve their corporate governance practices and implement corporate governance measures beyond compliance requirement. Furthermore, the practice of recognizing outstanding companies encourages healthy competition and serves as a benchmark from which other listed companies can learn, thereby raising the corporate governance standards in their own companies, and enhancing the corporate governance culture in Taiwan's capital markets.