To enhance corporate transparency, the 11th Information Disclosure and Transparency Ranking results indicate the companies with a ranking of A++ grew substantially by 69%.
The Securities and Futures Institute entrusted by the Corporate Governance Center of the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation (CGC) has completed and published the results of the 11th Information Disclosure and Transparency Ranking (IDTR) result to enhance corporate information disclosure and transparency and to protect investors’ interests. The results are also resolved by the “Information Disclosure Evaluation Committee” and the “Advisory Committee” under CGC. 773 Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation (TWSE) listed companies and 577 GreTai Securities Market (GTSM) listed companies, a total of 1,350 companies, are included in the assessment. The results indicate a sharp improvement from last year. 49 companies, an increase of 69% or 20 more companies from last year, are rated A++ and 61 companies, an increase of 33% or 15 more companies from last year, are rated A+.
CGC stated that the 11th IDTR follows the method used for the 10th IDTR. The assessed companies are divided into TWSE and GTSM listed companies and then ranked according to their scores from high to low, as A++, A+, A, A-, B, C and C-(see list in attachment). The results have been available to the public since the 3rd IDTR report and the number of top graded companies has been growing each year. It shows that TWSE/GTSM listed companies are making efforts to improve information disclosure and transparency.
The purpose of the IDTR, CGC said, is to enable investors to understand the level of compliance of TWSE/GTSM listed companies regarding the information disclosure requirements, and to encourage corporates to volunteer to adopt international standards by disclosing more financial and non-financial information that is beyond regulatory requirements. Therefore, in addition to a total of 65 items or 59.6% of total indicators (109 items), the ranking also includes 44 items which are beyond the regulatory requirements or 40.4% of the total indicators. The additional voluntary disclosure indicators are expected to be the motivation for corporations to voluntarily improve the quality of the information disclosure and transparency and meet international standards.
CGC also concluded the assessed companies scored an average of 87.32% in those 65 regulatory disclosure indicators. It shows most of the participating companies are in compliance with the regulation. In order to reward those TWSE/GTSM listed companies which achieve outstanding ranking, CGC plans to have recognition awards in late July. Those award recipients are expected to become the benchmarks for information transparency and improve the overall quality of the information disclosure.
The 11th IDTR results are available on Securities & Futures Institute website under “Information Disclosure and Transparency Rankings System Area” (http://www.sfi.org.tw/EDIS) and a link on Market Observation Post System (http://mops.twse.com.tw/mops/Web/index) is also provided for public access.