Leading law firm, Howes Percival has continued to expand its corporate, commercial and banking (CCB) team with the recruitment of Chloe Bristow.
A corporate governance and company secretarial specialist, Chloe joins from Dentons and will be based at Howes Percival’s Milton Keynes office.
Chloe will oversee the provision of the firm’s company secretarial services to its clients across all its offices, bringing her substantial experience to advising on the usual compliance and statutory legal requirements as well as other day-to-day corporate matters, such as share capital and director changes, annual statutory filings, company formations and dissolutions. She will also incorporate limited liability partnerships and take on the CCB team’s post-completion work in relation to its completed deals.
Chloe has provided company secretarial services to start-ups, entrepreneurial owner-managed companies and household name groups and has rolled out bespoke training programmes to her clients to help them undertake the routine aspects of the work in-house.
Chloe’s recruitment is another key building block in the Howes Percival CCB team’s growth strategy. With Chloe on board, the firm aims to add transparent, efficient and streamlined business-as-usual company secretarial services to the support it has always offered clients old and new on their M&A transactions.
What are company secretarial services and why do businesses need them?
While the requirement for a company secretary of a private company was abolished under the Companies Act 2006, the burden of keeping a company compliant often falls to a director or other nominated individual who ends up trying to shoehorn the additional work into their normal day job.
Filing deadlines can get missed, documents can be completed incorrectly, and although the penalties may not be severe, these are statutory requirements and any non-conformities can come back to bite when shareholders are looking to exit and the buyer’s due diligence exercise exposes errors or gaps that can be fundamental to a deal (if the shareholders are selling their shares, they need to be able to demonstrate that they were properly acquired in the first place). A properly administered company secretarial function is essential, but alarmingly easy to get wrong if insufficient time and attention is devoted to it.
Howes Percival’s company secretarial expertise takes this weight off clients’ shoulders and ensures companies remain compliant with the latest regulations and are in good standing. Howes Percival’s experts look after the following, but are not limited to:
- company formations
- maintaining corporate statutory registers
- re-constituting corporate statutory registers
- preparing and filing the annual confirmation statement at Companies House;
- filing of statutory accounts at Companies House (once signed off)
- preparing and filing Companies House forms
- advising on corporate changes (such as company name changes and director changes) and preparing all required documents
- preparing documents for any changes with share capital (including share allotments, sub-divisions, consolidations, re-designations and capital reductions)
- dealing with share transfers (including any required stamp duty applications)
- advising on directors’ duties
- drafting of board meeting agendas and minutes and directors’ resolutions
- drafting shareholders’ resolutions and documents required for any shareholder meetings
- incorporating and managing property management companies (including individual plot sales)
- advising on PSC (people with significant control) regulations
- drafting of articles of associations, shareholders’ agreements and partnership agreements
- advising on the procedure to strike a company off and preparing the required documents
Howes Percival takes care of all those unfamiliar procedures, obligations and administrative details leaving directors to do what they do best – focusing on running and growing a business.
Andy Harris, partner and head of Howes Percival’s CCB team, said:
“I am so pleased Chloe has joined Howes Percival. Having worked closely with Chloe at Dentons for over a decade, I know she is exactly the right person to build our company secretarial team and deliver it in the transparent, no-nonsense way our clients expect.
“Our simple menu-priced structure allows clients the flexibility to choose only the elements of the service they really need whilst at the same time having the peace of mind that these routine but legally essential services are being provided for a fixed price, on time, with the same quality and responsiveness ingrained in everything else we do.
“Our aim is to be the ‘go-to’ firm for corporate, commercial and banking advice in the Central and Eastern regions. Attracting and retaining talented individuals is key to achieving this and having Chloe focus on our company secretarial specialism expands the range of support we can offer our valued clients.
“Activity levels have remained extremely buoyant this year and this looks set to continue so having Chloe on board to manage the post-completion and company secretarial services will be a huge benefit to the CCB team.”
For more information about Howes Percival’s Company Secretarial team, contact Chloe Bristow on 01908 247248 or email companysecretarialteam@howespercival.com
