The Korea Exchange announced on November 7 that a total of 549 companies listed on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) have disclosed their corporate governance reports this year.
There are 541 listed companies with total assets of 500 billion won or more, which are required to publicly disclose their corporate governance reports. In addition to these, 8 companies voluntarily disclosed their reports.
The Korea Exchange previously checked compliance with the report guidelines and for any errors or misstatements between June and August. As a result, the exchange requested 31 companies with reporting errors to submit corrections in September.
Looking at the status of the '13 Key Indicators'-which are encouraged as benchmarks for establishing transparent corporate governance-the compliance rate for these 13 key indicators among companies this year was 55.3%, a slight increase from last year's 51.2%. The 13 key indicators include items such as the implementation of electronic voting, adoption of cumulative voting, and holding general meetings of shareholders on dates other than the concentrated dates.
However, there were differences based on asset size: companies with assets of 2 trillion won or more had a compliance rate of 67.1%, while those with assets of 500 billion won or more (but less than 1 trillion won) had a compliance rate of 38.6%. In particular, there were significant gaps by asset size in compliance rates for indicators such as communication between internal audit bodies and external auditors, gender diversity on the board of directors, and notification of dividend policies at least once a year.
By indicator, those related to the composition and system of audit bodies showed high compliance rates across companies, such as establishing procedures for internal audit access to key management information (98.6%) and the presence of accounting or financial experts on internal audit bodies (87.9%). On the other hand, indicators related to audit body operations, such as establishing an independent internal audit department (48.0%) and holding quarterly meetings with external auditors (62.6%), were identified as areas needing further improvement.
Meanwhile, the period between the date of the general shareholders' meeting and the date of the meeting notice has been increasing, providing shareholders with more time to review. This year, the average period between the general meeting date and the notice date was 21.9 days, up by 1.3 days from last year's 20.6 days.
The exchange plans to expand mandatory disclosure requirements to all KOSPI-listed companies next year. To ensure smooth disclosures, it will distribute guidance materials and systematically support listed companies through one-on-one consulting and training related to report preparation.
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