Voting on proposals and board member elections have been the highlights of the general shareholder meeting. Many shareholders that are unable to attend the meeting in person tend to participate by voting electronically. With peak season of shareholder meetings approaching, TDCC launched a new service in late March 2021, that allows shareholders to access the e-voting outcome via our STOCKVOTE platform at 2pm one day before the scheduled general meeting in order to further enhance transparency in e-voting.

According to Taiwan Stock Exchange, about 670 thousand new stock trader accounts were opened in 2020, which means many novice investors will attend general meetings for the first time in 2021. Notably, attending a general shareholder meeting is very easy now: instead of showing up in person, investors only need to download TDCC’s e-Passbook or brokerages’ stock trading apps on their smartphones, or visit our STOCKVOTE website at https://www.stockvote.com.tw/evote/index.html?language=EN to participate in meetings regardless of their locations.

In the past, investors had to spend hours moving from place to place to attend general meetings, and if they had work, they either had to take a day off work or abstain from proposal voting and board elections. However, since 2018, all publicly-listed companies in Taiwan have been required to provide e-voting to shareholders who cannot make it to the general meeting so that these shareholders can still have a say on company decisions. That said, the results of e-voting are only made available on the day of the general meeting at the meeting venue.

To solve the problem, TDCC has strived to increase transparency in e-voting as part of the Corporate Governance 3.0—Sustainable Development Roadmap of the Financial Supervisory Commission by having issuing companies or their shareholder services agents release the results of e-voting on TDCC’s STOCKVOTE platform at 2pm one day before the scheduled general meeting starting late March 2021.

Ms. Jane Huang, Senior Vice President of TDCC’s Issuer Services Department said the Company Act stipulates that e-voting shall be closed two days before the actual general shareholder meeting. In the past, shareholders had to go to the meeting venue in person to see the results e-voting results, but now they can access the results early by going to the STOCKVOTE website a day before the meeting after 2pm. The website has an “E-voting Results” section where they can search for issuing companies or their shareholder services agents to view the results.

The new service gives all shareholders online access to e-voting results, and thus improves the transparency in e-voting as well as the quality of corporate governance in Taiwan, marking a major breakthrough of shareholder activism.