Who ensures entity management is taken care of?
It's clearly important to know who is responsible for making sure entity management is taken care of properly for the company – failure to do so could lead to gaps being left in the program or duplications of effort. Encouragingly, however, only 13 percent of respondents are uncertain where the responsibility lies within their company.
Among the rest, the most common answer is legal (45 percent) followed by the corporate secretary’s office (40 percent), the general counsel’s office (20 percent) and compliance (10 percent). Among those who say some other function is responsible, some cite the board, the CEO or human resources. Respondents are able to pick multiple answers.
Entity management oversight at larger companies is more likely to be located in the legal department and/or corporate secretary’s office.
At small cap-companies, 37 percent of respondents say legal has responsibility and 31 percent say it lies with the corporate secretary’s office. This rises to 57 percent legal and 45 percent corporate secretary’s office at mid-caps, and to 64 percent legal and 64 percent corporate secretary’s office at mega-caps.
There is a greater level of certainty about which department is responsible at mega-cap companies, where just 5 percent of respondents don’t know, compared with 12 percent of those at small-cap companies.
Among US respondents, legal is the most frequently cited (57 percent). This compares with 36 percent of respondents in Canada and 37 percent of those in Europe. Respondents in Europe are more likely to point to the corporate secretary’s office (46 percent) than are those in the US (41 percent) or Canada (33 percent).
