Recruitment of company secretaries is booming as more firms look to expand.

That's the view of one London recruiter, who says that demand for company secretaries is stronger than ever.

David Press, associate director of EJ Company Secretarial (part of EJ Group), claims that small firms which traditionally used their finance directors to fulfil company secretarial roles were now looking to recruit stand-alone secretaries.

"It's boom time for company secretaries," Press told pagenum="65"Recruiterpagenum="65" in an exclusive interview.

"It's basically smaller firms who are looking to expand, or larger firms looking to list on the stock market and need a company secretary to help them with paperwork."

He said the increase in the number of corporate governance issues and corporate guidelines was helping to drive the increase in demand.

Press adds that the recruitment drive could be seen "across the board" with the exception of retail, which was a sector with much consolidation.

A trainee company secretary can expect to earn a salary of at least £18,000 a year, while group secretaries positions attract six-figure salaries.

Another trend was for firms to take on company secretaries who have a legal background, to deal with increasing amounts of legislation.

Margins for recruiters of company secretaries are comparable to the legal sector, say consultants.

WHAT IS A COMPANY SECRETARY? The duties of a company secretary include: maintaining the statutory registers, such as the register of members, the register of directors and secretaries and the register of directors' interests; ensuring that Justyn Randall has told Recruiter he stands by his assertion that he did not mislead Multi Group in any way when he sold them his Global Medics business in February. He said he made "full disclosure". Randall's comments come just days after he agreed to buy the business back from Multi. He said he had not been forced to buy it. "We've just reached a stage where we want to buy it again," he said. In July, Multi put out a statement on the stock exchange saying that the financial performance of Global is likely to be "significantly below the level portrayed to the company by the vendors of Global at the date the business was acquired". Randall, who owns 50% of Global, declined to be drawn on the terms. He said: "It's complicated. We're in negotiations". Multi paid £9.6m for Global, and said it would pay another £4.1m depending on performance.