Corporate Governance has been a widely discussed topic in the U.S. since the 1930s. Following the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the financial frauds of US companies including Enron and Worldcom in 2001, a consensus among authorities and investors around the world has gradually formed. That is, Corporate Governance systems are fundamental infrastructures for the sound development of financial markets. Based on this belief, many countries have been devoted to promoting and implementing Corporate Governance.

The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has also been actively supporting Corporate Governance to ensure that it is effectively carried out to raise corporate competitiveness. Toward this end, the FSC holds the annual Taipei Corporate Governance Forum, inviting financial experts and business managers from both home and abroad to join. Participants share latest information on Corporate Governance and exchange opinions on relevant policy and practice. The Forum enters its sixth year in 2009.

Major trends in international financial markets are the key agenda of this Forum. Many interesting issues on the subject of Corporate Governance are discussed in the past five years, including Board functions, shareholder rights, Information transparency, the responsibilities of supervisory authorities, insider trading regulations, and so on. The TAICGOF serves as a regional forum for sharing experience and has an excellent reputation for promoting Corporate Governance consistently. It also improves the Corporate Governance implementation of listed companies.

The FSC invites outstanding experts to help understand the latest OECD Principles of Corporate Governance and latest issues in international financial markets. In the past five years, representatives from the OECD Steering Group on Corporate Governance, and experts from South Korea, Hong Kong and other Asian countries delivered speeches. In addition, representatives from securities exchange authorities of the U.S., Germany and Australia shared their experiences as well. The number of participants also grew from 570 to over 750 persons in last year. The expansion is parallel to the progress of Taiwan's authorities and listed companies in Corporate Governance works.

Since the ongoing financial market turmoil, this year the Forum will further focus on the issues which are worthy to be discussed deeply during this critical time and expand to include a great diversity of topics. The concept and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a common theme of government, civil and business organizations worldwide recently. The first panel discussion will concern new trends of corporate social responsibility in a globalized economy. How exchange-listed companies should carry out CSR and recent developments of CSR-related indices and funds will be addressed in panel discussions. The second panel discussion will focus on how we may build a more reasonable and transparent compensation system for CEOs and directors. We can see some executives in the US continued to receive high compensation while their companies were bailed out by the government. The ensuing public disquiet prompted the US government to push for better regulation of the compensation system. We will discuss how to use the Corporate Governance mechanism to build a more reasonable and transparent compensation system for CEOs and directors. Moreover, the issues of appropriate guidelines for information disclosure regulation for the authorities, self-discipline in Corporate Governance for companies, and performance of directors and senior executives and reasonable distribution of compensation will be discussed.

The 6th Taipei Corporate Governance Forum will be held at Taipei International Convention Center on November 12, 2009. The scale and scope of this year's Forum will surpass former years, a clear indication of the determination of Taiwan's authorities and listed companies to carry out Corporate Governance.