What are the Responsibilities of Company Secretaries?
If you are new to the world of business, you may not know how you should handle some issues like registering your office address, appointing directors, maintaining the company’s statutory documents and records and so on. These are something that you must deal with when you run a business. However, if you are not familiar with this field, you may not even have an idea about where should you start. Thus, to solve these problems, you may contact a secretarial firm Johor Bahru to get the corporate secretarial services and let the experts give you a hand.
Company secretaries are responsible for making sure that the company follows the legal requirement. Besides, secretaries are responsible for managing the general meeting for the company. This means that they need to create and get external and internal agreement to all the records for shareholders’ reference. Organising the attendance and the management of meetings is also one of the responsibilities of the secretaries. In this case, they are also responsible for taking meeting minutes as well as making sure that the company follows the right procedures.
Apart from that, secretaries should also handle the board meetings, which means that they need to organise the reporting system as well as formal decision making of the company. When the company holds a meeting, company secretaries should prepare meeting agendas with the chief executive and the chairman. Also, they need to attend the meetings, take meeting minutes and maintain meeting books. The employees will also need the secretary when they want to get the copies of meeting minutes certified. The secretary has to make sure that the company follows the right procedures too.
Another important function that the company secretary is responsible for includes the maintenance of statutory registers and books. They should update Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM) on any changes that the company has made or experienced. For example, they need to update the changes of the company’s name, director’s name, particulars and residential address, any changes in the company’s director, any resignations, appointments or death, as well as the share issuance.
Company secretaries should also communicate with the shareholders and handle the payment of interests and dividends. They need to issue reports about issues concerning rights and capitalisation. Managing the relations between institutional shareholders and general shareholders is a vital responsibility of them too.
Restructuring, issuing and transferring the company’s share and capital is managed by the corporate secretaries. They need to implement any changes in the loan and share capital structure of the company. Furthermore, in acquisitions and disposals, the secretaries (Also see Corporate Secretarial – Foreigner And Company Law) are one of the key members of the company’s team. They are responsible for safeguarding the interests of the company by making sure that the documentation has been completed efficiently. Also, they need to ensure that with the due diligence disclosures, the company will be able to carry out proper commercial assessments before they make any transaction.
Share registration is another issue that the company need to deal with. In this matter, the corporate secretaries are responsible for maintaining the register of members of the company, as well as handling issues that are relevant to transfers and other affairs that have an impact on the shareholdings. After registering the company, they need to manage the requests and queries from the shareholders too.
The responsibilities of the company secretaries (Also see Notifying the Particulars and Alterations in Company’s Director, Manager and Secretary) include but are not limited to those mentioned above. Thus, acquiring corporate secretarial services is important as this ensures that the company always comply with the legal requirements.