Corporate Governance

The Herrington Carmichael Corporate Governance Team can help you not only to assess your own Corporate Governance but also the Corporate Governance risk of targets companies in case of investments or purchases. We can support you to develop and implement your Corporate Governance strategy in a manner bespoke to the needs of your company.

We provide:

• Assessments of Corporate Governance risks
• Bespoke Corporate Governance frameworks
• Clear presentations and training for boards or internal staff

Our team has many years of experience in Corporate Governance, working with a variety of different businesses across a range of sectors. For the Assessment of Corporate Governance Risk, we can support you with:

• Developing, preparing and drafting with you a questionnaire with relevant questions to review the key structure of a company from a Corporate Governance perspective
• Going through the questions and requesting specific documentation from the person responsible for legal corporate matters at the company
• Reviewing key documentation and responses provided by the company to ensure it is in line with key principles of Corporate Governance

To support you with your regular Board meetings, we can assist you by:

• Preparing and sending invitations for board meetings during a year
• Collecting and review of board material to ensure correct timing and clarity for board members
• Attending board meetings and taking minutes
• Drafting minutes and circulation of draft minutes
• Finalising minutes together with the chair

Boards are responsible and accountable for the strategy and its implementation in a company. A first step to ensure compliance with this responsibility is to get an independent assessment of the current documentation, structures, way of decision making and information flow.

Similarly, we help you to properly respond to questions by different stakeholders like investors, banks, supervisors, rating agencies or investigators about your Corporate Governance, which will save you time and effort.

We also help investors with their due diligence into a target company's Corporate Governance to give them comfort as how the company operates and that they can take a sound investment decision.

To make sure that the strategy set by the board is reaching all levels of the company, clear structures need to be in place. This entails the development of:

• Clear roles and responsibilities to avoid any overlaps or gaps, which lead to a waste of resources and are slowing down of the business
• Clear and transparent structures to make sure that necessary tasks are delegated properly down and incidents are escalated properly to give the board the ability to deal with issues in a timely manner
• Proper decision-making processes to ensure that every decision maker in the company is equipped with the right prerequisites to make decisions in such a way to avoid unnecessary risks

The board of directors has the overall responsibility for the company and needs to act in the best interest of the company. In order to do that, they need to be collectively and individually suitable to manage the company. We can:

• Develop and provide tailored induction training for newly appointed directors
• Develop and provide tailored development training on Corporate Governance for individual directors or the whole board
• Support with board effectiveness evaluations

For the needs of your AGM's we can support you by:

• Preparing, drafting and agreeing with you the notice for the Annual General Meeting (AGM)
• Reviewing the documents accompanying the notice and flagging any issues to you
• Reviewing any information to be published on the website.
• Preparation of a script for the chairperson, discussing and preparing the chairperson for the meeting, preparing potential questions and responses for the shareholders
• Collecting and review of board material to ensure correct timing and clarity for board members
• Attending the meeting and taking minutes
• Drafting minutes and circulation of draft minutes
• Finalising minutes together with the chair

Our team has many years of experience in Corporate Governance, working with a variety of different businesses across a range of sectors. We can support you by:

• Reviewing, identifying and agreeing key legal, regulatory and operational requirements of your company from a corporate governance perspective
• Reviewing documentation and discussion with you or your contact responsible for corporate legal matters
• Reviewing the responses provided by you to ensure they are in line with key principles of Corporate Governance
• Developing, preparing, and agreeing with you corporate governance frameworks and principles based on the recommendations in line with what has to be published on your website in accordance with rule 26 of the AIM rules

Our services cover the legal technicalities that underpin corporate decisions, by drafting the necessary paperwork to ensure that businesses comply with their statutory requirements and function legally.

These services include:

• Companies House filings
• Drafting board and shareholder minutes and resolutions
• Reconstituting and maintaining statutory registers
• Acting as registered office

It's like building a house. You have an idea of what you want, but you need advisors to assess the structure, comply with buildings regulations and ensure the property doesn't collapse. Our CoSec Team are like those advisors.