Highway Corporate Services
Legal in Hillcrest

Highway Corporate Services (Pty) Limited offers you a comprehensive range of company secretarial services provided by a team of professionals with many years of experience.

Over the past 18 years the company has evolved into a respected entity that offers a full range of outsourced company secretarial and corporate governance services to listed and unlisted companies. We offer our services as Company Secretary on an outsourced basis which enables us to ensure that we are truly independent. The spread of our client base means that we are not reliant on any one client for the sustainability of the business. Highway is run by a team of professionals with many years of experience between them. We only employ people who have already acquired the necessary skills and disciplines through having obtained a legal degree, or who have completed the 4 year Chartered Secretaries Southern Africa diploma course and have embarked upon their Board examinations. We believe that the outsourced service we offer is still relatively rare in South Africa. With the increasing need for specialisation in the fields of accountancy, taxation and human resources due to a plethora of new legislation, it has been possible for us to specialise in the areas of corporate secretaryship and corporate governance. The fact that we have a number of professionally qualified and experienced staff members means that one of us is able to take the lead with a client to provide continuity, but there are always others who can step in if the lead person is not available for some reason. Because we are passionate about providing hands-on practical work experience for suitably qualified students aspiring to become company secretaries, we provide the mentorship and practical experience necessary to accept appointment as a Company Secretary and assist them in finding suitable appointments once the period of training is complete. We are equally passionate about promoting the role of the Company Secretary and assisting in the creation of greater awareness of the importance to any company of embracing good ethics and good corporate governance practices. Our vision is to create awareness of the role of the Company Secretary and the need for good governance practices in every business to ensure sustainability. Our mission is to provide a high quality, independent, professional advisory and support service to our clients in the fields of company secretaryship and corporate governance. Traditionally, the Company Secretary was the chief administrative officer of a company and matters such as finance, tax, insurance and human resources fell under his/her mandate. In the increasingly regulated environment in which we operate in South Africa, it is becoming difficult for a Company Secretary to keep abreast of all the changes and to have sufficient knowledge of all these disciplines to be able to carry out his duties effectively in the role of general overall administrator. Over the years each of the disciplines mentioned above has become more specialised and in larger companies to-day there is usually a separate finance department run by a Chartered Accountant who is often the financial director of the company. As can be seen from the extract from the Companies Act below, the role of the Company Secretary is at the same time subservient to the Board of directors to who it reports, but at the same time is tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that directors are aware of their responsibilities and duties and comply with the Act and the Memorandum of Incorporation of the company to whose Board they are appointed. have the requisite knowledge of, or experience in, relevant laws; and\. making directors aware of any law relevant to or affecting the company\. ensuring that minutes of all shareholders’ meetings, board meetings and the meetings of any committees of the directors, or of the company’s audit committee, are properly recorded in accordance with this Act\. certifying in the company’s annual financial statements whether the company has filed required returns and notices in terms of this Act, and whether all such returns and notices appear to be true, correct and up to date\. ensuring that a copy of the company’s annual financial statements is sent, in accordance with this Act, to every person who is entitled to it, and. In our capacity as professional company secretaries we also offer to mentor inexperienced Company Secretaries to give them support and confidence in performing their duties. Whilst the statutory duties of a Company Secretary are laid down in Section 88 of the Companies Act of 2008, as Company Secretary on an outsourced basis we see our duties as encompassing, but not limited to, those listed below. Jenny Lupton, FCIS, M.Inst.D Jenny is a Chartered Secretary, a Member of the Institute of Directors and founder of Highway Corporate Services (Pty) Ltd. Jenny has over 40 years’ experience in company secretarial practice, both in