Business Conduct and Ethics

Good Corporate Citizenship and Social Responsibility

ASE believes that corporate sustainable development is vital to ASE’s long-term strategies and success. To help ASE practice good corporate citizenship and social responsibility in enterprise operation, ASE has formulated Code of Business Conduct and Ethics. Standards of business conduct and ethics are prescribed clearly and thoroughly in aforementioned policies and specifications, with the aim of fostering a culture of honesty and accountability and realizing ASE’s commitment to the highest level of ethical conduct in all ASE’s business activities.

As the highest governance body of ASE’s business conduct and ethics, Corporate Sustainability Committee (the “CSC”) coordinates and supervises the establishment and implementation of the ethical corporate management policies and specifications. The CSC periodically reviews the promotion of business conduct and ethics and the compliance of policies and specifications, and reports to the board of directors. The Corporate Governance Taskforce under the CSC promotes ethical policies and specifications to our global manufacturing sites and assits in managing and adopting appropriate policies and specifications to ensure ethical management in compliance with the requirements of local laws and regulations. Global manufacturing sites are responsible for planning the internal organization, structure, and allocation of responsibilities, formulating standard operating procedures and conduct guidelines in accordance with corporate policies and specifications, and promoting awareness and educational activities with respect to ethics policy in internal management and in daily operation. The Group Internal Audit is in charge of supervision to ensure the operating effectiveness of reporting system. In addition, we retainted an independent third party to verify our compliance with business integrity related matters above mentioned. The report can be accessed here.

External Channel for Reporting

All ASE’s members shall comply with all provisions of business conduct and ethics policies and specifications. ASE’s members and any third party may use the following channels to report any violation, suspected violation or any conduct that could result in a violation of ethical management or commercial ethics:

Internal Channel for Reporting

Upon receipt of the report, ASE will investigate and handle the report according to the aforementioned policies and principles.

A whistleblower shall report, either with name or anonymously, a violation by providing specific facts, related information and documents available for investigation. Unless otherwise provided by laws, ASE and the third parties appointed by ASE to assist in the investigation will keep confidential the identity and privacy of a whistleblower and/or the content of his/her report to the fullest extent permitted by law so as to protect him/her from any unfair retaliation or treatment.

2023 Programs and Implementation

ASEH strives to implement policies and specifications related to business conduct and ethics through various ways such as policies and specifications establishment and educational training. The projects promoted and implemented in 2023 are as follows:

• Education and training, advocacy and communication

  • The Administrative and Practice Procedures to Prevent Insider Trading of ASEH stipulate clearly the restrictions with regard to trading of shares by board members. Email reminders on the policy and regulatory compliance were sent out by the corporate governance officer to the board members prior to the blackout period when the Company released its quarterly and annual financial reports in 2023.

  • ASEH Corporate Governance Officer has duly reported to the board on the company’s current ethical management and work plans on May 29, 2023.

  • The company has promoted its business code of conduct and ethical compliance reporting mechanism on the Group Audit Management System platform, which is accessible to our global business locations. This is intended to help employees understand when and where they can file a report or complaint. We also conduct in-person and online meetings with management and employees at our global business locations to inform them of the procedures for handling reports of unethical conduct. We optimize the reporting system to enhance the convenience for whistleblowers and encourage employees to proactively report unethical behavior. We are committed to investigating and handling every report in a fair and equitable manner, in accordance with the company’s whistleblowing policy.

  • ASEH’s business locations around the globe have conducted business practices and ethics related training to all employees through In person, online and e-mail communication, as well as announcement and dynamic advocacy to conduct, with the topics covered including ethical management, anti-corruption, trade secret, avoidance insider trading, information security, privacy, RBA Code of Conduct, and employee code of conduct at all business locations (162,792 participants clocked a total of 78,857 hours on the course). In total, 39,244 employees attended the courses related to the company’s Administrative and Practice Procedures to Prevent Insider Trading and on applicable laws and regulations, completing 19,710 hours.

• Risk assessment

  • All of our sites around the world have conducted business ethics risk assessment and developed corresponding action plan based on the identified risks. No major risks of violating business ethics have been identified.