Interim Board Secretary and General Counsel — Delivery

Two offices, one accountability

Combining the company secretary and general counsel roles gives one person an unusual vantage point: they see both how decisions are recorded and how they are enforced. Done well, the combination closes the gap between what a board believes it approved and what the organisation actually signed. Done badly, it produces immaculate minutes over a weak contract book. This interim appointment carries executive authority for 12 months to redesign entity governance around who really owns each decision.

The authority is specific. You will set which entity-level decisions belong to the board and its committees and which approval limits the people running individual holdings may keep. You will also fix the evidence base on which funding, people and controls are approved across markets. Every legal commitment gets your verdict to keep going, pause or stop, and anything that parks cost or risk where nobody has agreed to hold it goes back to its author. Investment cases that pass over adoption, what they rely on or the downside will be declined. Who leads what, and how matters escalate, will be yours to confirm, and where the committee and operating leaders disagree you will settle it before funds or staff are tied up. In property, where entity structures tend to multiply around individual developments and holdings, knowing exactly which entity can bind which asset is not administration; it is the control itself.

A year measured in records and calendars

During the first ninety days the Audit Committee Chair should agree with you how entity decisions are allocated, which thresholds sit locally, and a board and committee calendar that puts the right questions in front of the right forum at the right time. By month nine, every legal commitment should have been sorted into those that carry on, those paused and those ended, and every proposal that left cost or risk unowned should have gone back to its sponsor. Month 12 should see entity records, the route for escalation and committee reporting running steadily, so that legal delivery sits in a settled structure that does not depend on the interim who built it.

A secretary-counsel the committee can lean on

You have made legal calls in property and real estate where every week of hesitation had a price you could count, in organisations that reached $545 million in revenue and 1,800 people across two or more countries. You have carried a contested downside in front of an audit committee chair in plain terms, without dressing it up. Crisis response experience is looked at closely, because a board secretary is often the person holding the record when events move fastest; succession and professionalisation experience count too. Governance ethics is expected at level 4; transaction legal work, disputes and investigations, and stewardship of board and stakeholder relationships are each expected at level 3. You know when local judgement should be preserved and when it should be removed, and you write that boundary down so others can apply it. Stopping a legal commitment does not, for you, require a unanimous vote of country leaders.

Four conversations, opening with the audit chair

The Audit Committee Chair, to whom the seat reports, talks with you confidentially by video during week one. The Board Chair follows in the third week, for a practical session on how the board and its committees divide their work. Week five brings an in-person meeting with executive leaders who between them cover every function, and the seventh week ends the process with the full board. Expect to know where you stand within two working days of each step.