As the domestic COVID-19 pandemic escalated, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) raised the alert level to level 3 nationwide in mid-May 2021. The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) also asked publicly traded companies to postpone their 2021 shareholder meetings and announced that the rescheduled meeting season would be between July 1 and August 31. To help companies convene shareholder meetings and ensure pandemic containment during the alarm period, the FSC instructed the Taiwan Depository & Clearing Corporation (TDCC) to formulate the Disease Prevention Operating Guidelines for Shareholder Meetings During Level 3 Alarm Period as per the CECC Guidelines. Meanwhile, the TDCC will make necessary revisions and adjustments according to the pandemic trajectory for publicly traded companies to run shareholder meetings accordingly.

Taiwan was still at alert level 3 in early July when companies started to convene shareholder meetings. Strict crowd size measures were implemented to avoid cluster infection. Organizers had to keep the number of people under 20 for each indoor venue and under 40 for each outdoor venue. As the CECC lowered the alert level to level 2 on July 23 and revised the crowd size requirements for gatherings, the TDCC guidelines were also changed. The group gathering number of shareholder meeting sites was altered simultaneously to make it clearer and smoother for companies to carry out their venue and seat arrangements.

TDCC President Han-Chiang Chu extended his gratitude to 1,930 TWSE/TPEx-listed companies and companies of Emerging Stock Market that had carefully followed the regulations. We should give them credit for making shareholder meetings amid the pandemic possible. The above organizers not only complied with the meeting size measures and strengthened crowd management, but they also took shareholders’ temperature, asked shareholders to wear masks, and adopted the measures stipulated in the guidelines. President Chu also said that under the guidance of the FSC, since July, the TDCC had been tracking companies’ pandemic preparedness, venue arrangement, meeting size to check if their shareholder meeting practices aligned with the guidelines. Besides, President Chu would like to thank all shareholder services agencies for providing pandemic response information of their client companies to keep the FSC posted and helping stop the spread together.