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Graduate Company Secretary Assistant
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Department Overview
The Company Secretarial (CoSec) team comprises the General Counsel and Company Secretary, Deputy Company Secretary, and a Senior Assistant Company Secretary and is part of the wider Legal and CoSec team (which comprises the Legal team and Whistleblowing/Ethics team).
This a new role and the role holder will work closely with all members of the CoSec Team to deliver very high governance standards across the full range of company secretarial and share plans requirements of a FTSE listed plc. The role holder will be organised and demonstrate that they have attention to detail, professional interpersonal skills and a willingness to learn and develop. This is an excellent opportunity to learn and experience the workings of a company secretariat function in a listed plc environment.
The Company offers flexible and dynamic working. While the role will be based at Head Office in London, a blend of working remotely and from the London office is expected (attendance on-site whilst Board/Committee meetings are taking place is expected).
Responsibilities
As the Graduate Company Secretarial Assistant, your duties and responsibilities are likely to include, but not limited to:
PLC Board and Board Committee Governance and Compliance
- Manage the annual programme of Board and Committee meetings including preparation of agendas, attendance at some meetings to take minutes, oversight of the distribution of Board and Committee papers and maintenance of forward business schedules and action logs.
- Preparation of sub-committee minutes.
- Preparing and submitting regulatory announcements, FCA and NSM notifications/uploads, complying with all relevant deadlines and the Listing Rules, Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules requirements e.g. Total Voting Rights, TR1 notifications, directors' dealing and six-monthly Blocklisting returns.
- Annual Review of Board and Committee Terms of Reference and Matters Reserved for the Board.
- Supporting in the delivery of training and inductions of directors.
- Administration and advice in relation to the Market Abuse Regulation and the Costain Dealing Code including maintenance of insider and project confidential lists.
- Maintenance of Governance pages of website (liaising with the Corporate Communications team).
- Analysis of results and preparation of Board and Audit Committee papers in respect of the internal Board and Committee performance evaluation and internal and external audit evaluation processes.
Statutory Compliance
- Accountability for a portfolio of approximately 30 UK companies: maintaining the statutory records database and ensuring all statutory requirements are met.
- Preparing minutes for subsidiary companies in relation to statutory accounts, dividends, changes to directors etc (note no operating company board meetings to attend).
- Assist in the preparation of documentation as required to serve the information needs of Group Finance, Tax departments and auditors at the half-year and year-end e.g. production of statutory books, registers, directors' interests and information on share option schemes.
- Providing company secretarial support on any corporate simplification activities, equity injections, liquidations and inter-company dividends.
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Costain Group PLC Annual Report and Accounts and AGM
- Assist in the drafting of sections of the Company’s Annual Report, initially taking full responsibility for the drafting of the Directors’ Report, Directors’ biographies and Shareholder information section and providing input to the Governance and other sections.
- Liaison with auditors on verification process.
- Drafting the Notice of Annual General Meeting and ancillary documentation, and liaison with the designers and registrars regarding distribution.
- Supporting the organisation of the Annual General Meeting and drafting the chair’s script.
Employee Share Plan Administration
- Administer (in conjunction with the Deputy Company Secretary) the launch, ongoing maintenance and maturity of options under the Company’s two executive share plans (administration in-house) and UK Sharesave scheme.
- Liaison with Company’s employee benefit trust.
- Assist in the review of Blocklisting applications to ensure that sufficient shares are available for issue by the company Administration of all listing applications liaising with the Company’s brokers.
- Maintenance of Directors’ interests schedules in accordance with the Share Ownership Guidelines.
Shareholder Matters
- Assisting with managing the share register, including liaising with the registrar, supporting with the AGM and General Meetings, responding to shareholder enquiries and all administration in relation to dividend payments including a scrip.
Essential Knowledge, Skills, and Experience
- Highly organised, with excellent attention to detail and the ability to work well as a team player will be key strengths. You will be able to adapt quickly in a fast-changing dynamic environment. The role will encourage you to be curious and proactively offer both ideas and solutions to support the evolving needs of the team and the wider business. You will be able to work autonomously on tasks and manage your own workload to ensure that all relevant deadlines are met.
- ICSA qualified with a strong working knowledge of company law and governance requirements including UK Corporate Governance Code, Listing Rules, Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules together with familiarity with the Market Abuse Regulation.
- Ambitious - motivated to progress and learn quickly.
- Works with a sense of urgency, often reprioritising competing priorities in relation to a large and varied workload.
- The role requires strong IT skills, particularly with Excel.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with ability to be clear, concise and focused.
- Strong project management, planning and organisational skills; must be able to manage own time, prioritise and meet deadlines without compromising on quality.
- Ability to rapidly build credibility with Directors and senior management, and form effective relationships with third party providers (eg corporate advisors, auditors, registrar and sharesave scheme provider).
- Ability to use inclusion to encourage collaboration - working together to deliver our work - as a close-knit community that is built on trust, equity and positive approaches.
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Desirable
Experience of the management of executive and employee share option schemes desirable.
Qualifications
Essential
- ICSA Qualified
About Us
Costain helps to improve people’s lives with integrated, leading edge, smart infrastructure solutions across the UK’s energy, water, transportation and defence markets. We help our clients improve their business performance by increasing capacity, improving customer service, safeguarding security, enhancing resilience, decarbonising and delivering increased efficiency. Our vision is to be the UK’s leading smart infrastructure solutions company. We will achieve this by focusing on blue chip clients whose major spending plans are underpinned by strategic national needs, regulatory commitments, legislation or essential performance requirements. We offer our clients leading edge solutions that are digitally optimised through the following five services which cover the whole lifecycle of their assets: future-shaping strategic consultancy; consultancy and advisory; digital technology solutions; asset optimisation and complex programme delivery. Our culture and values underpin everything we do.
Costain appreciate the time and effort taken when applying for one of our positions but, due to the high volume of responses, we are unable to provide individual feedback on candidates at application phase. We do share individual feedback following an interview.
A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that disclose they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people.
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