While COVID-19 is raging around the globe, Taiwan’s excellent advance deployment of prevention measures has won international approval. To achieve the successful conduct of corporations’ shareholder meetings and disease prevention, Financial Supervisory Commission has mandated TDCC to incorporate efforts from all peripherals to stipulate Disease Prevention Operating Guideline for Shareholder Meetings for corporations’ disease prevention reference. Besides, corporations and stock agencies are advised to strongly advocate shareholders’ active use of E-voting for meeting attendance. E-Voting is efficient and unlimited to meeting time and place, so it is indeed the most ideal approach to achieving disease prevention and reserving shareholders’ rights for meeting attendance at the same time.

According to a survey of TDCC, since the aforementioned disease prevention guideline was released on March 16, corporations that already held annual shareholder meetings or extraordinary general meetings before the end of March had complied with the government’s disease prevention policies. The shareholders attending the meetings in person were required to have temperatures taken and wear masks at all times. Also, there were not any cases of shareholders with fevers found. A majority of shareholders voiced their opinions through E-Voting, while only a small number of shareholders attended the meetings in person. Take a listed company that held its annual shareholder meeting at a rental venue in a hotel at the end of March for example. Shareholders were required to have temperatures taken and their hands sanitized by hotel staff before entry; their temperatures were taken by the corporation staff for the second time before check-in. If any shareholders with higher temperatures were found, they could exercise their rights to speak and vote in the quarantine area. Besides, to effectively keep seats indoors at least 1 meter apart and the number of attendees no more than 100, the seats were set in a crisscross seating pattern, and a back-up venue was prepared. All of the above showed the corporation’s considerable emphasis on the disease prevention mechanism.

As the high season for annual general meetings is around the corner, a growing number of corporations are expected to hold annual shareholder meetings in May and June under such a severe pandemic. TDCC will keep promoting E-Voting to investors through different channels. Through E-Voting, shareholders don’t have to attend the meetings in person; the risks of infection are therefore eliminated, and shareholders can still express their opinions. The rights of shareholders are protected, and corporations’ annual general meetings can conclude successfully.