A recent notification of Thailand’s Capital Market Supervisory Board (CMSB) has extended the scope of previously granted relief measures for securities-issuing companies by relaxing the requirement to hold the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the shareholders before submission of audited financial statements to the Office of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). One of the main purposes of the AGM is to formally appoint an auditor to audit the financial statements.

The earlier CMSB Notification No. Tor Chor 28/2563, which came into effect on March 31, 2020, permitted securities-issuing companies that were unable to hold the AGM due to the COVID-19 outbreak to submit their first quarter financial statements for 2020 to the SEC while the convening of the AGM is pending. The new CMSB Notification No. Tor Chor 35/2563, which came into effect on July 16, 2020, extends that relaxation to cover all quarterly financial statements, including the six-month financial statements due to the SEC by December 31, 2020.

This relaxation is automatically available to all securities-issuing companies, except for those that still have any financial statements (or other statutory reports) pending submission to the SEC. The condition to this relaxation is that the securities-issuing companies must retroactively appoint one of the SEC-approved auditors in respect of the submitted audited financial statements at the next possible shareholders’ meeting.

With the continued promotion of social distancing policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in light of limitations to the use of electronic meetings, convening an AGM for large numbers of shareholders is still challenging for many public companies. Therefore, this relaxation will be well received by many companies.

For more information on this measure, or any aspect of capital markets and conducting securities business in Thailand, please contact Passanan Suwannoi on [email protected] and Kobkit Thienpreecha on [email protected].