TAIPEI — A Taiwan Depository & Clearing Corporation (TDCC) manager spoke about environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and the TDCC's evolving investor relations platform (IR platform) at a webinar in late September. The presentation came as ESG investing continues to grow exponentially and as more investors and corporate issuers in the country leverage ESG-related data to generate insights into investment decision-making.
The webinar was part of the Taiwan Investment Summit hosted by Hong Kong-based financial magazine the Asset. The event brought together issuers, pension funds, insurance companies, asset managers, and banking institutions to discuss the evolving landscape in the Taiwan's post-pandemic investment market.
With ESG playing an increasingly important role in the local stock market, the IR platform relaunched in 2020, coinciding with a new financial regulation to help foreign investors that requires listed companies to publish bilingual financial reports and the agendas of shareholders’ meetings, among other information.
The platform later began to incorporate ESG ratings by globally trusted rating agencies, including FTSE Russell, ISS ESG, MSCI, and Sustainalytics. It was the first agency of its kind to do so. The ratings provide valuable insights into the management of listed companies that share the goals of improving business practices and mitigating enterprise risks.
Jane Huang (黃蓁蓁), the head of the TDCC's issuer services department, spoke on the IR platform during the webinar, saying corporate issuers as well as institutional and retail investors may access the ESG information free of charge.
"The TDCC IR platform is designed to help Taiwan stock market listed companies improve their ESG performance and align themselves with international benchmarks," Huang said. "We're pleased to say there’s a noticeable improvement on ESG."
As of today, ESG reports for the top 400 Taiwanese listed companies, as well as proxy reports for approximately 800 listed companies, are available for download on the platform, according to the TDCC.