Expertise
Tom has been practising pensions law since 2016 and has extensive experience on a range of pension scheme issues. Tom regularly assists with corporate and commercial transactions and has worked as part of the client team for schemes with assets from £10m to over £6bn. Tom has a wide variety of experience, including:
- scheme consolidation
- GMP equalisation
- buy-in and buy-out projects
- member queries and interpretation/ amendment of scheme rules
- large-scale bulk transfers of members and compliance with consultation requirements
- public-sector pension schemes
- all liability management exercises from employer and trustee perspectives, consultation and benefit introduction/ removal/ change.
Experience
- Part of the team advising the trustees of the GKN Group Pension Scheme in 2018 on the hostile bid for the Scheme’s UK-listed principal employer.
- Advising trustee and employer clients on a full range of liability management exercises, from buy-in and buy-out to pension increase exchanges and enhanced transfer value exercises, including member consultation, reviewing legal agreements with insurers and advisers and dealing with scheme surplus. Most recently, Tom worked with Michael Collins to advise the trustees of the American Optical UK Pension Scheme on its full buy-in with Just Retirement Limited.
- Advising trustees of a multi-national employer on mitigation required following weakening employer covenant.
- Advising various public and private entities on joining and leaving public sector pension schemes, including the NHS Pension Scheme, Teachers Pension Scheme and Local Government Pension Scheme.
- Extensive experience working with trustees on GMP equalisation, conversion, reconciliation and rectification exercises, considering the proposed approach for achieving equalisation and working with administrators and actuaries to advise on the implementation of GMP equalisation projects.