Deputy Company Secretary

Description:

The Legal Department is a busy international team of professionals with experts based in the UK, Dubai, India, Singapore, Australia, Canada and the US. The UK legal team deals with a variety of legal issues that arise daily in a company the size and complexity of Mott MacDonald and the global team is headed by our Group General Counsel, a practising solicitor with over 30 years of legal experience. Our role is to serve our internal clients, the Mott MacDonald project teams from various business sectors, by providing commercially focused legal advice and support.

The role will be based remotely and in our Renaissance House, Croydon office which is a few minutes’ walk from East Croydon station with extensive network links to London, Surrey and Sussex. You will be an important member of the friendly Legal team which extends internationally.

The Legal and Corporate Secretarial team provides the legal and corporate services for all Group companies by working as an integral part of the business to help achieve Mott MacDonald’s strategy by ensuring the smooth running of good corporate governance and compliance of all Group companies. As a Deputy Company Secretary, you will be managing a team of two who will support this role in the provision of company secretarial services throughout the Group. The role involves dealing with a varied day-to-day workload of a busy Company Secretariat which provides advice and support to stakeholders in a large international group of companies. In return, you can look forward to all the responsibility and involvement of an integral role, providing you with a fantastic opportunity to further develop your career with global exposure. This position requires a company secretarial or legal professional with strong communication skills with the ability to communicate and liaise with all levels of the business including senior stakeholders and the Board of Directors.

The successful candidate will be able to assist as part of a team with the following duties:

The role reports to the Group General Counsel and Group Company Secretary within the Legal department. 
Appointed Company Secretary to multiple UK based subsidiaries and main trading company of the Group. 
Take ownership of all core company secretarial duties for the UK based entities (annual compliance work, board and shareholder resolutions) maintain Group diary of all important events throughout the year. Proactively plan projects and update the General Counsel in a timely manner on the same during weekly meetings. 
Advise on internal processes and controls around approvals of local appointments, changes to corporate structure of international subsidiaries, branches and similar. 
Document preparation:
Ability to draft board minutes, resolutions, review usual accounting documents and provide input along with other departments for the UK based companies. 
Ability to advise on the Articles, terms of reference, Trust deeds, Companies Act, and other relevant laws where required 
Ability to review, exercise judgement and provide input for documents prepared by external support in relation to overseas subsidiaries to ensure that documents are legally ‘sound’ and requests internally approved such as issue of dividends, AGMs, changes to board structures, bylaws, capital etc. 
Preparation of powers of attorney based on standard template and drafting non-standard powers, advise on externally prepared documents for non-UK jurisdictions that documents meet corporate governance in terms of restricted delegations and other internal controls criteria. 
Arrange execution of legal documents (NDAs, contracts, deeds etc), ensure that they are pre-approved in line with corporate governance and existing internal controls are in place. 
Administer legal documents to be notarised, legalised and apostilled for use in foreign jurisdictions. 
Oversee or administer necessary filings with Companies House. 
Assist the Group General Counsel and the Group Finance Director with drafting of the Governance section and Director’s report of the annual report for the UK main companies subject to extended reporting. Proactively monitor new regulations impacting development of Corporate Governance in the UK and the Group. Discuss with the General Counsel any immediate changes. 
Support bids by providing statutory documentation. 
Support annual Group audit where required. 
Provision of KYC, and other documents as requested from the divisional business units. 
Assist with communications relating to the Group’s shareholders. 
Lead team at the AGM and other similar projects. 
Proactively work with Group Marketing Department to ensure Group Corporate Structure and list of entities on internal website is accurate for external use (bids, KYC etc) and share updates about any changes. 
Manage Company Secretarial budget, annual contracts and relationships with service providers. 
Assist with the entity consolidation programme (corporate transactions in the UK and internationally including incorporations, dissolutions and restructurings.) in liaison with other Group support departments. 
Ad-hoc long-term projects, assisting and supporting the Group General Counsel as and when required. 
Pro-actively contribute to the success, high performance and development of the company secretariat team as a whole.