TECO Electric & Machinery Co., Ltd. has been ranked in the top 5% in the TCGA corporate governance evaluation for the seventh straight year, an honor attained by only 10 TWSE-listed companies, which underscores the remarkable performance and trustworthiness of the company’s board of directors, according to chairperson Sophia Chiu.
In order to uphold this honor, the secretariat of the board of directors formulates evaluation reports based on the results of a self-evaluation questionnaire survey as reference for the board of directors to guide continuous improvement.
The company has entrusted the Taiwan Corporate Governance Association (TCGA) with evaluating the performance of its board of directors. In its 2021 evaluation report, the TCGA points out that “The company’s managing directors meet once every two months to review and discuss its major business plans and proposals, in order to reach a consensus before sending them to the board of directors for resolution, raising the latter’s meeting efficiency significantly.”
The TCGA also affirmed the company’s setup of an “R&D innovation committee,” comprising outside experts and scholars, to keep track of emerging technologies on the market and consider the company’s product-development direction systematically, with a view to formulating short-, mid-, and long-term product roadmaps that promote the company’s competitiveness.
CONSTANT IMPROVEMENT IN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
In addition to constant improvement governed by the law and all relevant regulations, the company is working, with reference to the suggestions of the Taiwan Corporate Governance Association, to modify the criteria for judging the results of its self-evaluation questionnaire, formulate a manual setting the code of ethical practice for directors, and evaluate the performance of the in-house auditing chief, with reference to the opinions of independent directors, thereby strengthening the functioning of the auditing committee.
In addition, the company’s corporate governance center, founded in 2015, has set the company’s corporate governance targets and coordinated the efforts of 11 relevant units and more than 20 supervisors and other members in attaining those targets, including the corporate governance and sustainability committee, the investor relations unit, the secretariat of the board of directors, and the units of human resources, legal compliance, internal auditing, information services, accounting, corporate purchasing, corporate administration, performance development, and health & safety.
SUSTAINABILITY AWARDS
Meanwhile, TECO has also scored remarkable performance for the cause of sustainability, as evidenced by its having been honored with Taiwan Corporate Sustainability Awards (TCSA) by the Business Council for Sustainable Development of the Republic of China (BCSD-Taiwan, formerly the Taiwan Corporate Sustainability Association) for six consecutive years, its inclusion by the FTSE4Good TIP Taiwan ESG Index as a constituent stock for two years in a row, its inclusion by the Dow Jones Sustainability Emerging Markets Index 2020 as a constituent stock, and coverage by the S&P Sustainability Yearbook 2021.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, TECO has since late year held quarterly investors’ conferences online, to update investors on the company’s business and financial situation. TECO reports that it plans to attend international meetings on corporate governance and keep close tabs on the latest corporate governance trends worldwide. (Advertorial)
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