Graduate Company Secretary Assistant

Role Overview

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Providing company secretarial support on any corporate simplification activities, equity injections, liquidations and inter-company dividends.
• 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.
• Administer (in conjunction with the Deputy Company Secretary) the launch, ongoing maintenance and maturity of options under the Company’s two executive share plans 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.
• 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.

Requirements

• ICSA Qualified

Benefits

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.