Assistant Secretary (mix cosec/legal work)

Our client is a British pharmaceuticals company. It now seeks to recruit an Assistant Company Secretary to report directly to the GC/Co Sec. The role will be hybrid, based 2/3 days a week in their London office.

This is a broad ranging role, handling all the day to day statutory compliance work in a pretty self-sufficient manner, and also some employee benefits matters, together with some legal management work. A full job description is available on request.

Principal Accountabilities:
Direct report to the Group General Counsel/Company Secretary, and responsible for all company secretarial matters including:

Statutory compliance:

• Liaising with the Finance team on dormant entity reduction
• Subsidiary company meetings and restructurings and advice to overseas subsidiaries on such issues.

· Ensure correct compliance with Companies Act:

• Registering – changes to Directors, Secretaries, Addresses, Share Transactions, Share Allotments, Striking Off applications

• Maintaining statutory records and compliance with company law and assisting overseas subsidiaries to be compliant.

• Online filing of confirmation statements using Diligent Entities software.

• Dealing with ad hoc queries from group companies

Employee benefits:

• Management of Share Replacement Plan (SRP) including preparing the documentation and board resolutions for the granting of annual awards and payouts.
• Advising the payroll and participants on SRP tax issues.
• Liaising with external administrator, EBT trustees and advisers to manage the SRP.

Legal management and other:

• NDA/MSA and other contract review/drafting as well as corporate matters.
• Management of share registrars’ services and budgets and dealing with all dissenter register enquiries.
• Departmental budget and negotiation of contracts with service providers.
• reviewing legal documents in connection with M&A activity.
• Management of dataroom documentation.
• Maintain a comprehensive shared drive and filing system for the group’s company. secretarial function, working closely with the Executive Assistant to the General Counsel and Company Secretary.

This role would suit a candidate with the following skills/experience;

• part or newly qualified with the CGI or law degree
• experience performing statutory compliance duties as outlined above
• excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
• demonstrable stakeholder management skills both internally and externally