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Directors and supervisors strongly approve of the practice of compiling CSR reports

Publish time:2015-01-26

According to the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE), the key to improving corporate governance and fulfilling corporate social responsibility among corporations is strong approval and support from the board of directors and the top management. To help directors and supervisors understand the focuses of compiling corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports and their benefits to corporations, the TWSE and the GreTai Securities Market (GTSM) arranged the “Corporate Social Responsibility Report – Seminar on Demonstrating the Value of Sustainable Operation” on January 22 at Taipei International Convention Center. The TWSE and GTSM invited, Mr. Eugene Chien, former Minister of the Environmental Protection Administration, and Mr. Niven Huang, General Manager of KPMG Sustainable Development Consulting Corporation, to give speeches, share their experiences and exchange ideas with directors and supervisors of various publicly traded companies. As many as three hundred directors and supervisors signed up for this event due to their concern for this topic. The entire auditorium was packed.
 
Eugene Chien, chairman of the Board of Taiwan Institute for Sustainable Energy, points out that only 32% of the top 500 corporations in the world have survived in the past 40 years. He also cites the opinion of John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, and states that only 40% of the corporations will survive a decade from now. Sustainable development for a corporation requires the ability to respond to changes within and outside the corporation and the ability to take risks. The culture of corporate social responsibility is still not prevalent in Taiwan. Corporations can start from compiling CSR reports and understand the real situation of corporations under the international standard. The key to sustainability is that the objective and vision of the corporation has to be aligned with economic development, social justice, and environmental protection. The corporation also has to lead the way and implement such practice from the top down to develop optimal culture of sustainability. The corporation should rely on sound legal structure and work with consumers, environmental groups, human rights and anti-corruption organizations , and investment funds to create a common social force worldwide. The corporation should also use the CSR report as an aid to
“shape image externally and create culture internally” to achieve sustainable development goals.

General Manager Huang also serves as the Chairman of the consultant group of The Association for Sustainable & Responsible Investment in Asia. In the speech, he states that the information on the environment (E), the society (S), and governance (G) in CSR reports is the so-called information on non-financial performance, which is equally important to the disclosure of the information on financial performance. After the financial crisis, issues of sustainability and responsible investing became popular rapidly. By the end of last year, the total assets under the management of financial institutions that have signed the United Nations (UN) Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) reached 45 trillion USD.
Exchanges in Taiwan and Singapore and nations in Europe and the Americas also actively promote mandatory disclosure of CSR information in recent years. Additionally, according to “2014 Global Investor Coalition on Climate Change,” the entire world has to spend at least an additional US$700 billion to US$1 trillion per year on clean energy to prevent global warming. This figure is only US$250 billion right now. Against rapid changes in the external environment, business owners have to increase their risk awareness and actively foster innovation capabilities of operation and technology. They should also use good corporate governance as the basis and internalize such capabilities in the fulfillment of CSR.
 
The TWSE states that this seminar will promote the concepts of CSR and embed them in the management level. It also encourages corporations to use CSR reports as an effective tool of communication with stakeholders inside and outside the corporation, so that corporations and their stakeholders can effectively review the performance of corporate governance, fulfill their social responsibilities, and allow the corporations to reach the level of “sustainable management” that can last a century.