The Korea Exchange announced on the 20th that it will conduct governance improvement consulting in collaboration with the Korea ESG Standards Institute to support the disclosure plan for improving the governance structure of listed corporations and enhancing corporate value.
The exchange and the Korea ESG Standards Institute will diagnose the governance status of individual corporations and provide improvement indicators, conducting consultations to raise the overall level of governance. The consulting will focus on the methodological aspects for diagnosing the governance status of listed corporations and setting improvement goals, with specific measures for upgrading ratings excluded.
Consulting will proceed in the following order after selecting target corporations: ▲ data submission and preliminary diagnosis ▲ corporate interviews and improvement indicator proposals ▲ support for participation in disclosures. It will be conducted online targeting key executives.
The target for consulting is 30 listed corporations with a governance rating below B+ that do not have issues regarding market soundness. The B+ rating corresponds to the mid-level among the seven ratings assigned by the Korea ESG Standards Institute. The exchange will make a judgment regarding market soundness based on considerations such as managed items, trading suspensions (due to substantial review reasons), and designations of non-compliant disclosure corporations within the past two years.
If the number of applying corporations exceeds 30, priority will be given to those with plans to submit disclosure plans for enhancing corporate value. Consultations will be accepted from today until the 2nd of next month.
The exchange plans to support the reflection of results derived from the consulting process in the corporate value enhancement disclosures actively and to encourage listed corporations to establish and implement governance improvement goals from a medium- to long-term perspective.
A representative from the exchange said, "This year, we will conduct it in the form of a pilot program and, based on feedback from participating corporations, supplement the consulting content to expand implementation next year."