Taiwan Depository & Clearing Corporation

In order to improve corporate governance and protect shareholders’rights, the authority FSC has been actively promoting the policy on listed companies’adoption of evoting at shareholder’s meetings. Any listed companies whose paid in capital is over 2 billion and number of shareholders exceeds 10,000 all need to adopt evoting as one of the means for shareholders’to exercise their voting rights at shareholders’meetings. This year, a total of 605 companies adopt evoting, which accounts for 85% of the market value. This evoting mechanism improves the situations where dates of shareholders' meetings are centralized and therefore shareholders have difficulties voting; in addition, evoting incorporates the unlimited scale of technology and shareholder activism, indicating Taiwan’s capital market has stepped into the rank of advanced countries.

As Chairman & CEO of TDCC Sherman Lin points out, with the global emphasis on corporate governance, the consensus that shareholders' meetings and shareholder activism are the basis of corporate governance has gradually formed worldwide. In order to strengthen the execution of corporate governance, evoting mechanism has become an important channel. TDCC, the peripheral institute in securities and futures market, is highly regulated by authorities and has constructed Stockvote, the evoting platform for shareholders' meetings. Stockvote enables shareholders to exercise their voting rights without the limitation of time and space and therefore implements shareholder activism. To meet the demands of international shareholders, STP has also been set up together with Stockvote. The STP is widely acclaimed; it brings more convenience to international investors’ voting and therefore raises attendance rates. It is not only emphasized by foreign capitalists but also regarded as the milestone for the internationalization of Taiwan’s capital market.

According to CG Watch 2016 from ACGA on Sep 29, 2016, Taiwan, following Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, ranks fourth among the 11 Asian countries, compared to 6th in 2014 with total points going up from 56 to 60. In addition, Taiwan is the country that makes the greatest progress; its corporate governance score goes up by 3 to 60. The number of listed companies in Taiwan that adopts evoting goes up from 208 in 2014 to 605 in 2016, seeing an explosive increase. It is clear that Taiwan’s evoting has won international recognition and has been accepted by securities market investors.

The platform constructed by TDCC, Stockvote, featuring market neutrality and noninvolvement in letter of proxy, has already acquired ISO 27001, dp.mark and TPIPAS. In order to encourage investors to attend shareholder’s meetings via evoting, TDCC continues the expansion of lucky draw on evoting. This year, there was a total of over 9.8 million votes through evoting, which hit a record high in terms of total voting number, number of companies involved, and the percentage of evoting in shareholders’meetings. What's worth mentioning is that over 360,000 votes from investors were conducted through “Stockvote App”on mobile devices, which clearly shows that mobile technology has become an important channel for investors to exercise their voting power.