2009-08-27 13:59:12

Legislative Yuan passed a partial revision of the Company Act, authorizing the competent authority for securities to ask publicly listed companies to adopt electronic voting so that their shareholders can exercise voting rights more easily. The revised law also stipulates the use of the cumulative voting system in the election of directors and relaxes the restriction on the issuance of cash dividends from legal reserve, moves designed to protect the interests of shareholders, facilitate corporate operations, and attract investment. The Ministry of Economic Affairs points out under the existing law, when a company calls a shareholders' meeting the shareholders are allowed to exercise their voting rights either in writing or electronically; in recent years, however, the dates of the annual shareholders' meetings of different listed companies have been too concentrated and shareholders have been unable to attend all of them. To protect shareholders' interests, the current revision authorizes the agency in charge of securities to ask companies, depending on their size, number of shareholders, structure of shareholding, and other factors, to offer electronic voting as one of the channels whereby shareholders can exercise their voting rights.