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.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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