English

Against the backdrop of increasing responsibilities and workload for board members, overboarding has become a sensitive topic in the realm of today’s corporate governance. Directors are considered overboarded if they sit on a number of boards which could result in excessive time commitments and an inability to fulfil their duties such as squeeze in last-minute emergency board meetings to deliberate on pressing issues.

The Report on 2020 Annual General Meeting of Public Listed Companies, a joint study between MSWG and the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia to analyse AGM practices of PLCs in 2020 has highlighted three areas of concern, namely the Q&A session, board attendance and the role of chairman. In the report, we have also suggested some areas of improvement for PLCs in conducting their AGMs moving forward.

In its recently published annual report, SC said its assessment found that RPTs pose significant effect on share price on the day after the RPT announcements were made. It also found that there were above-average price movements on the day leading up to the RPT announcements. This suggested that there could be leakages of price-sensitive information before RPT announcements were made publicly.

On the other hand, SC’s assessment on several large RPTs also suggested that RPTs involving PLCs within family groups and those with long-serving IDs may require closer monitoring to ensure that the transactions are not detrimental to minority shareholders.