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FSC asks companies for more English materials

The Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday that it would encourage companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange to provide foreign investors with English versions of materials used at annual general meetings.

The financial regulator's remarks came in response to a report by the Asian Corporate Governance Association (ACGA) that ranked Taiwan as the second-worst market in a list of 11 Asian markets and three benchmark markets -- Australia, the UK and the US -- in terms of proxy voting practices.

"We are studying the possibility of including English shareholders' meeting information as one of the items for annual information disclosure reviews of publicly traded companies," commission spokesperson Susan Chang (張秀蓮) told a press conference yesterday.

The regulator is also mulling whether to make communication voting a mandatory practice in order to ensure that investors can exercise their rights by partaking in the shareholders' meetings for all firms they invest in, Chang said.

Earlier this month, ACGA released its "ACGA Asian Proxy Voting Survey 2006," which ranked Taiwan ninth with a score of 50 percent and a qualitative assessment of "poor."

Japan ranked tenth with a score of 47 percent and also a was rated "poor" in the area of proxy voting.

Hong Kong was the leading Asian market with a score of 67 percent and a qualitative assessment of "fair," followed by Singapore's 61 percent and "fair."

Nevertheless, the report indicated that Hong Kong still scored below Australia, the UK and the US.

The survey used 10 indicators to evaluate a market's proxy voting practices, including the amount of notice given before meetings and providing sufficient time for shareholders to vote before meetings.

Taiwan ranked poorly for the amount of notice given before shareholder meetings, the availability of translated material and the clustering of meeting dates.
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