萬國法律事務所

Taiwan's Securities and Futures Bureau Deputy Director-General, Tsai Li-ling (蔡麗玲), announced on 15 June that all listed companies and public companies must disclose potential risks of and countermeasures for climate change, along with related greenhouse gas information in their annual reports.
 
The information included in such reports must be quantitative and comparative.  The guidelines will be released before the end of 2021 and will be officially launched in 2022.  The information must be disclosed when the annual reports are published before the shareholders' meetings.
 
Tsai Li-ling pointed out that in the past, public companies disclosed ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) using only “literal” descriptions, which are difficult to compare.  Starting in 2022, specific quantitative information will be available, and companies' 2021 situations are likely to be disclosed when the 2022 annual reports are published.
 
In order to further improve the quality of companies' ESG information disclosures and to encourage companies to provide more comparable information, the annual reports form appendices will be revised, and the reference examples and disclosure guidelines will be updated.  In this way, companies will disclose more important information regarding environmental and social issues, such as occupational safety (e.g., occupational disaster data), workplace diversity statistics, and equality (e.g., the proportion of female employees to senior executives).
 
Given that domestic investment and trust enterprises are gradually considering ESG factors in their investment decision-making processes and are issuing funds on related topics, Taiwan has recently discussed and formulated relevant regulations with reference to foreign regulations on ESG fund information disclosures.  The draft has been submitted to the Association of Investment Trusts and Investment Consultants to solicit opinions from industry insiders, and it is expected to be released before the end of July 2021.