The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) on Tuesday announced that companies planning initial public offerings (IPOs) must have at least one woman on their board of directors to boost gender equality among listed firms.
The announcement would affect a dozen companies planning IPOs on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) and the Taipei Exchange (TPEX) this year, Securities and Futures Bureau Deputy Director Sam Chang (張振山) told a news conference in Taipei.
Six out of 32 firms planning to list on the TWSE and five out of 24 looking to debut their shares on the TPEX do not have female directors, TWSE president Chien Lih-chung (簡立忠) and TPEX chief executive officer Edith Lee (李愛玲) said, adding that some firms are making contingency plans to meet the new requirement.
Photo: Kelson Wang, Taipei Times
The TWSE and TPEX are considering giving firms time to install female directors before the end of the year, the commission said.
Listed companies scheduled to hold board elections next year are also required to have at least one female director, Chang said.
Currently, 497 listed companies, or 28 percent of the total, do not have female directors, he said.
As 163 companies plan to hold board elections next year, they must comply with this new requirement, he said.
From 2025, listed firms that do not meet the requirement that one-third of their board must be female will have to explain why and present improvement plans, he said.
“Women joining the board has become the international trend, which is crucial to promote diversity and corporate governance,” he said.
Asia is lagging behind Europe in terms of female representation on boards, Chang said.
Taiwan would be the third nation in Asia making female board members mandatory, after Hong Kong and Malaysia, he said.
South Korea requires only companies with assets larger than 2 trillion won (US$1.5 billion) to appoint one female director, he added.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last