Korea Exchange (KRX) said on the 7th that a total of 549 companies listed on the stock market disclosed their corporate governance reports this year. Of these, 541 corporations are companies with total assets of at least 500 billion won that are required to submit reports, and the remaining eight disclosed voluntarily.
Earlier, the exchange reviewed compliance with the report guidelines and misstatements from June to August and, as a result, requested corrections in September from 31 companies that had entry errors.
The compliance rate for the "13 key indicators," the core standard for ensuring transparency in corporate governance, averaged 55.3% this year, up slightly from 51.2% last year. The key indicators include ▲ implementation of electronic voting ▲ adoption of cumulative voting ▲ avoiding peak shareholder meeting dates.
However, a compliance gap by asset size still exists. The compliance rate for corporations with assets of at least 2 trillion won was 67.1%, while those with assets of at least 500 billion won but less than 1 trillion won stood at 38.6%. The differences were particularly large in items such as gender diversity on boards, indicators on communication between internal audit bodies and external auditors, and notice of dividend policies.
By item, cases where an internal audit body included accounting and finance experts came to 87.9%, and establishing procedures for access to key management information was 98.6%, showing relatively high compliance. In contrast, indicators related to the operation of audit bodies, such as ▲ establishing an independent internal audit department (48.0%) ▲ holding quarterly meetings with external auditors (62.6%), were found to require improvement.
Regarding shareholder meeting schedules, the average period between the meeting date and the notice date increased from 20.6 days last year to 21.9 days this year. The trend is toward giving shareholders more time for review.
With mandatory disclosure of governance reports expanding to all KOSPI-listed companies starting next year, the exchange plans to strengthen distribution of guidance materials, one-on-one consulting, and education to support report preparation.