NAM's Policies on Proxy Voting

1. Corporate Governance and Proxy Voting

NAM has established a Corporate Governance Committee to assess invested companies' implementation of corporate governance, to establish basic policies for proxy voting, process and structure, and to keep current with laws and regulations related to corporate governance.

NAM is committed to fulfilling the functions of corporate governance placing priority on regular contact with invested companies by conveying our policies and opinions as shareholder and investor to the invested companies.

Besides such day-to-day contact to fulfill the functions of corporate governance, NAM also regards proxy voting as another important means for influencing share value.

Through these activities, we realize transparent business management that is constantly oriented toward share value improvement, which, in turn, leads to improvement in investment return.

2. Principles and Structure of Proxy Voting

NAM has established principles for proxy voting as follows:

1. Voting rights are exercised only for the purpose of advancing our clients' interests.
2. By actively utilising and leveraging our voting rights, we work on invested companies to pursue shareholder value oriented management, promote disclosure and other activities to install proper corporate governance structure and continuously monitor the state of implementation on the part of invested companies.
3. Our decisions shall not be distorted because of our affiliations or business relations.
4. Voting instructions shall be made even after all shares have been sold.

Research departments shall produce basic voting plans in accordance with the policies of Corporate Governance Committee. Final decisions on voting instructions are to be made by fund management departments. .

3. Screening Criteria

With many companies tending to hold their annual general shareholders meetings at around the same time, we have formulated our own screening criteria in order to be able to realize the effective examination of the agenda items of many invested companies. Specifically, we conduct the screening of agenda items if any of the following criteria is applicable:

1. financial results and share price performance
2. market capitalization
3. even if criteria (1) and (2) are not applicable, when it is deemed that non-voting could seriously undermine the value of investments

4. Exercise of Voting Rights of Global Equities

We issue instructions for the voting rights of global equities taking into account local circumstances of each invested company.

Proxy Process