【Commercial Times】

To increase the transparency and review time of companies that are preparing to be listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE), TWSE has announced that, starting today, certified public accountants (CPAs) that have been subjected to disciplinary action or disposition within the last three years, are prohibited from practicing attestation for companies that are preparing to be listed on TWSE. Furthermore, the period of review in between the time a company submits an application and before the convening of the listing review committee, has been extended from 6 weeks to 8 weeks.
TWSE has recently completed the relevant amendments to regulations such as the “Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation Procedures for Review of Securities Listings,” and the “Operational Procedures for the Review of Foreign Securities for Listing by the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation,” all of which are effective immediately.
Among these amendments, important attention should be paid to the following. Original rules stated that applicant companies in which their certifying CPAs practicing attestation “have been subjected to disciplinary action within three years or to a disposition under Article 37, paragraph 3 of the Securities and Exchange Act” are prohibited from applying to be listed on TWSE. Since it did not contain the disciplinary requirements of the Certified Public Accountant Act, the new rules have been amended so as to include CPAs that “have been subjected to disciplinary action or disposition within three years.”
The following amendment was another important focus of the new regulations. To make the review process preceding the securities listing review committee more comprehensive and rigorous, after future listing cases are deliberated by the managing department, the case should first be deliberated by an internal review committee, convened by the president of the TWSE, before being sent to the securities listing review committee. Thus, the right to approve or deny an application has been passed on to the internal review committee, convened by the president of the TWSE.
When a deliberation is made, the internal review committee should have at least two-thirds of its internal committee members present.
After the internal review committee has approved the listing, the case will be sent to the securities listing review committee. If the resolution of the committee denies the applicant approval for listing, the application will be rejected.
With regard to applications for an initial listing of a company's stock, the review period of the securities listing review committee has been extended from 6 weeks to 8 weeks. TWSE stresses that the previous period of 6 weeks was too short for a detailed review.
In accordance with the aforementioned amendment stating that the review period of the securities listing review committee has been amended from 6 weeks to 8 weeks, for cases that are exempt from the review by the securities listing review committee (such listing changes from TPEx to TWSE), the review period of the managing department has been extended from 1 month to 6 weeks.