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TWSE to Host Roundtable Discussions to Promote Shareholder Activism

Publish time:2015-06-25

The Corporate Governance Center of the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) and the Taiwan Corporate Governance Association (TCGA) will be jointly hosting a roundtable discussion on June 26, 2015. Competent authorities, major institutional investors, experts, and academics have been invited to discuss the feasibility of promoting the Stewardship Code to institutional investors in Taiwan, as well carrying out Corporate Governance Roadmap’s, “Promotion of Shareholder Activism.”

 

TWSE states that the Stewardship Code was originally published by the Financial Reporting Council in the United Kingdom in 2010. Comparing with most of the corporate governance related codes that focused on company side, the Stewardship Code targets institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies, and trust funds. Adopting the “comply or explain” system, the Stewardship Code is agreed to voluntarily by institutional investors. Signatories must comply with the relevant principles, including establishing policies on how to implement stewardship responsibilities, agendas, managing conflicts of interest, and voting. Furthermore, signatories must monitor their investee companies, voluntarily act collectively with other investors where appropriate, and disclose and report periodically on the points mentioned above. In short, the spirit of the Stewardship Code lies in strengthening the interaction between investors and companies though methods such as actively participating in shareholders' meetings, provide opinions on major resolutions, and urging enterprises to adopt good corporate governance mechanisms to improve company constitutions through the market force.

 

In keeping with the UK, the Stewardship Code began to emerge in the Asia Pacific region, with Japan and Malaysia both proposing their own Stewardship Codes in 2014. Taiwan launched the Corporate Governance Roadmap, founded the Corporate Governance Center, and implemented operations such as the corporate governance evaluation to shape corporate governance culture in 2013. To effectively promote shareholder activism, the Corporate Governance Center of TWSE and TCGA will be hosting a roundtable discussion. The competent authorities and institutional investors will be invited to deliberate the promotion of corporate governance from the perspective of investors through the Stewardship Code.