The Chairman of the Capital Market Opportunity Center (CMOC), Ms. Sopawadee Lertmanaschai, announced that the SET has discussed with the Department of Business Development of the Ministry of Commerce the possibilities of providing listed companies to deliver annual reports on CD-ROM in order to help reduce the costs of listed companies in document processing. This coincides with the time that listed companies are preparing to publish the documents to be used for their annual meetings to be held around April 2003.
"From these discussions, we found that there is an alternative for companies, sending the Annual Report, the financial statements (56-2), Meeting Reports, documents related to these meetings, as well as other kinds of documents not required by law to be specifically in a printed format in the form of CD-ROMs. The costs of producing data in a large amount of CD-ROMs are also cheaper than conventional publication. Therefore, the listed companies can use CD-ROMs starting from the next year. However, meeting invitations and the letters of consent will still be required to be in printed form."
"Therefore, from 2003 onwards, shareholders of listed companies opting to produce data for their annual meetings on CD-ROM, will be able to receive information in this new form. However, if they still want the information in conventional form, they can contact or send their request to the company, as listed companies are obliged to meet their requests," MS. Sopawadee added.
If a listed company wishes to produce their annual report and related documents for their annual meetings on CD-ROM, it is recommended that they also anticipate that some shareholders will still prefer to receive the information in printed form due to the fact that not everyone has a computer or the necessary software, or because of possible faulty CD-ROMs. Thus, in order to ensure that shareholders obtain copies of company information within the timeframe specified by law, listed companies should prepare and deliver the documents to their shareholders fourteen days prior to the date of the shareholders' meeting. Moreover, they should clearly provide the name of the right department to contact if necessary, plus the address, phone and fax numbers in the invitation letter so that the shareholders can readily contact them to obtain any further documents. As well, listed companies should also, as a precautionary, take measures to prevent any possible corruption of the information on the CD-ROM before shareholders receive them.
"Sending the annual report on CD-ROM is an alternative for producing and sending documents for the annual meeting to shareholders. Companies that have no desire to produce and deliver this information on CD-ROMs can still produce it in printed form as usual. Listed companies can, therefore, choose the best way that suits them." the CMOC said.
In addition to providing an alternative for listed companies to produce their data in CD-ROM format, they will also receive diskettes containing names and addresses of their shareholders from the Thailand Securities Depository Co., Ltd. (TSD) at the book-closing date, so that it will be easy for them to search for their shareholder information in the case where they have to send copies of the annual reports as well.
Besides providing data on CD-ROMs, listed companies can also submit their annual reports to the SET online via the ELCID system, so that their data will be published for investors and the general public on the SET website, www.set.or.th. This provides another information channel for companies to disseminate information about themselves and their operational performance to local and foreign investors quickly and widely. Once again, this will be on a voluntary basis only.
