Publicly Offered Funds Disclose First Voting Information at Shareholder Meetings as Shareholders

This article is reprinted from: Securities Daily

Reporter Wang Ning

On March 20, WanJia Fund released voting information for shareholder meetings of listed companies in 2025, where they participate as a shareholder (through public fund holdings). This is the first announcement of a public fund participating in corporate governance as a shareholder.

The announcement shows that in 2025, WanJia Fund participated in 41 shareholder meeting votes, including 15 annual general meetings and 26 special shareholder meetings, all via online voting. The main reasons for participation included major matters involving the listed companies and holdings exceeding 5% of circulating shares. Most votes were in favor, with a few companies’ special shareholder meetings receiving opposition votes.

Regarding the types of listed companies WanJia Fund voted on, they covered key industries such as information technology, non-ferrous metals, chemicals, energy, and machinery manufacturing. Examples include Anheng Information, Shijie Technology, Luxi Chemical, Huayang Shares, Yanyan New Materials, Sirui Pu, Kingsoft Office, and others. The voting topics ranged from reviewing annual reports, profit distribution plans, reports from the board of directors and supervisors, to related-party transactions, external guarantees, amendments to the articles of incorporation, refinancing plans (such as issuing shares to specific targets), equity incentive plans, and board elections. Overall, this demonstrates the active role of institutional investors in fulfilling their fiduciary duties and engaging deeply in corporate governance.

Public funds, as the “stabilizers” of the capital market, play an important role in exercising shareholder rights with professionalism and regulation, which helps improve the quality of listed companies and protect the interests of small and medium investors. In May last year, the Asset Management Association of China issued the “Management Rules for Publicly Offered Securities Investment Fund Managers Participating in Corporate Governance,” requiring public funds to report their voting and decision-making activities for 2023 and 2024, and starting from 2026, to disclose annually on their official websites the previous year’s voting activities by the end of April.

According to multiple public fund sources, they will continue to disclose announcements of their participation in shareholder meetings as shareholders in accordance with relevant requirements. WanJia Fund is the first in the industry to disclose such information.

A relevant business leader from Southern Fund told reporters that public funds purchasing stocks through equity products have closer relationships with listed companies. Their participation in corporate governance helps create a more transparent and stable environment for long-term capital participation in the market. Additionally, public funds can carry out more proactive and responsible management by actively exercising ownership rights, continuously encouraging companies to focus on and improve their corporate governance, thereby helping companies achieve long-term quality improvement and value creation.

“While implementing participation in corporate governance, public funds still need to strengthen risk supervision and management to prevent conflicts of interest, strictly control insider trading, and mitigate reputational risks,” said the Southern Fund executive. The company has incorporated ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) factors into its investment practices since 2021, actively practicing responsible management through corporate governance participation, proxy voting, and other methods, to promote continuous improvement in the quality of listed company governance.