Exchange Extends Corporate Governance Report Disclosure Deadline Due to COVID-19...Guidelines Also Revised

[Asia Economy Reporter Song Hwajeong] The Korea Exchange announced on the 31st that it has decided to extend the disclosure deadline for corporate governance reports for companies that received approval from the Financial Services Commission to extend the submission deadline for audit and business reports in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Accordingly, the extended deadline is July 15, which is two months from the extended submission deadline for audit and business reports.

Along with this, the Exchange also revised and announced the corporate governance report guidelines.

According to this revision, the disclosure requirements related to the activities of the board of directors, which are central to management activities, and individual directors have been significantly strengthened, and the level of information required regarding auditors and external auditors has also been enhanced.

First, to secure the expertise and diversity of the board of directors, a detailed explanation of the expertise of individual directors, as well as their gender and concurrent positions, must be specified. The scope of matters related to the appointment of directors that may infringe on shareholder rights has been greatly expanded to include suspects of unfair trading acts under the Capital Markets Act.

In addition, reflecting the amendments to the Enforcement Decree of the Commercial Act, if there are long-serving outside directors, their status and reasons must be disclosed. Article 34, Paragraph 5 of the Enforcement Decree of the Commercial Act stipulates that this applies when the director has served more than six years in the company or more than nine years including affiliated companies. Policies supporting the independent activities of outside directors and whether they are implemented must be strictly distinguished and recorded, and disclosure requirements have been strengthened to clearly explain whether evaluation results are reflected in remuneration calculation or reappointment of outside directors, as well as the board activity records of reappointed director candidates.

Furthermore, improvements have been made to ensure accurate information is provided regarding the scope of the board’s deliberation and resolution authority, attendance of auditors at shareholders’ meetings, and the timeliness of information provision to external auditors.

A representative of the Exchange explained, "As a result of a full inspection of the 2019 reports, some deficiencies were found in certain companies, which have been corrected and supplemented. In particular, revisions were made to resolve cases where compliance with key indicators and the content of duties were inconsistent, where only the introduction of institutional measures was recorded without detailed explanations, and where the meaning of disclosure subjects in the guidelines was unclear or caused confusion due to overlap with other parts."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.