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Executive Vice President of the SET Ms. Patareeya Benjapolchai announced that the SET Board, in its meeting on April 27, 2005, resolved to add to the listed companies’ rules to improve their supervision effectiveness. This is aimed at assuring that investors receive honest and comprehensive information, hence becoming yet another measure to protect investors.
“The Board approved using the public reprimand approach in any case where a listed company has breached or ignored the SET’s rules. The approach will utilize social influence and should lead to improved information disclosure. The reprimands will be conveyed to listed companies, member companies, related parties and the general public via the SET’s communication channels e.g. SETSMART and SET website. “In an effort to create a more transparent and unbiased environment, there’ll be representatives from the Listed Companies Association participating in considering each individual case. This approach has already been adopted in other markets such as Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore,” Ms. Patareeya said.
The SET EVP continued, “The SET Board also added a measure for late submission of financial statements. An SP (“suspension”) sign will be posted to immediately halt trading of a listed company’s securities if they have not submitted their financial statements within the stipulated time period. The sign will not be removed until their financial statements have been submitted, as these documents are important sources of information required by investors to make wise investment decisions. This measure will be first applied to the submission of Q1/2005 financial statements, which will come due on May 16, 2005. (According to the existing rule, the NP sign will be posted for 5 days before posting the SP sign).
She continued, “The Board also approved a measure to follow-up on information disclosures in cases where news has been released on listed companies, in which the companies’ executives appeared as the news sources. This new measure will be used if the news released hasn’t caused severe enough repercussions to stock trading to warrant a trading suspension. An NP (“notice pending”) sign will be posted in this case so as to inform investors that that SET is currently following up to collect additional information on the released news. This is an intermediate measure added to the existing measures, which require the H (“halt”) or SP signs to be posted in cases where news or information clearly causes the repercussions.
“The SET Board will meet with listed companies, analysts, and other relevant parties to clarify the most appropriate approach to information disclosure. The end result will be that information disclosure will improve and become more useful and beneficial for investors.
