Client Services / London / Pensions & Incentives - London

Pensions & Incentives - London

Our London Pensions & Incentives Practice has a wide range of experience in advising employers and trustees on all aspects of a broad variety of national and international pension, deferred compensation and equity incentive plans. We advise on:

  • pensions and employee benefits aspects of M&A, disposals, flotations, MBOs and MBIs
  • litigation and pensions ombudsman disputes
  • plan closures, mergers and reorganisations
  • surplus and deficit dispute resolution
  • best practice audits
  • insolvency, bankruptcy and liquidation issues
  • outsourcing from the public sector to the private sector

design and domestic and international implementation of all types of pension and equity incentive plan, including:

  • approved pension plans
  • funded and unfunded unapproved pension plans
  • personal pension plans
  • unapproved, approved and EMI option plans
  • long-term incentive plans
  • all employee plans
  • phantom and cash bonus plans
  • off-shore and on-shore employee trusts

It is of paramount importance to us to build strong long-term relationships with our clients and their other advisers. We ensure co-operation and creativity to achieve our client's aims and objectives.

Our recent experience includes:

  • Advising TotalFinaElf, one of the world's leading oil companies, on each of the five stages of the merger of its 13 final salary pension plans operating in the UK, creating a single fund with an aggregate value in excess of £1bn. This is thought to be one of the largest pensions mergers and one of the most complicated in the UK to date.

  • Advising Brightdart on the incentives aspects of its unconditional recommended cash offers for Quicks Group, valued at over £40m. Brightdart has now been acquired by CD Bramall making the group the largest Ford dealership in the UK.

  • Advising Kvaerner on the pensions aspects of the $100m sale of its hydrocarbons and process technology divisions to Yukos Oil.

  • Advising Schmalbach-Lubeca on the pensions and employee benefits aspects of the €1.7bn sale of its packaging and bottling businesses to Amcor. The combined Amcor-Schmalbach business will operate 51 plants in 20 countries, making it one of the top five packaging groups in the world.

  • Advising Industrial Bank of Japan, Fuji Bank and Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, three leading Japanese investment banks, on the introduction of new pension arrangements and strategy for the future operation of their existing pension plans.

  • Advising CSC Computer Sciences on the transfer of pension assets and liabilities from the Nortel Networks Pension Plan to CSC's Pension Plan as part of the outsourcing from Nortel.

  • Advising BAE SYSTEMS, the leading UK defence and aerospace group on the pensions aspects of the establishment of a 50/50 joint venture with Xchanging to form a new organisation called Enterprise, to which all of BAE SYSTEMS' HR function has been outsourced, potentially to be used to provide an HR function to other corporates.

  • Advising ProQuest (formerly Bell & Howell) on the pensions aspects of the disposal of its UK Imaging business to Kodak and of the disposal of its mail messaging technology businesses to Pitney Bowes.

  • Advising Land Securities Trillium on the pensions aspects of the outsourcing to its joint venture Telereal of the management of all BT's UK properties.

  • Advising Solocup on the pensions aspects of its acquisition of Insulpak, Solocup's first major acquisition in the UK; and advising the Insulpak pension plan trustees on ongoing matters.

  • Advising State Street Bank and Trust on their appointment by Scottish Widows Group for the provision of unit trust trusteeship, OIC, depository, custody related and fund accounting services.

Contacts

London Client Services

McDermott Will & Emery

McDermott Will and Emery