Our CMS Cameron McKenna pensions team is one of the largest and best regarded in the UK. Unlike other pensions law practices, we work on pensions litigation as well as more non-contentious areas. We believe this helps us brief clients on the full range of related issues. These can include drafting scheme documentation, scheme mergers and de-mergers, dispute resolution, the reviewing of investment management and custody agreements, Pensions Ombudsman cases, bulk transfers, and advice in relation to submissions for the PPF levy and contingent assets. We advise both employers and trustees on final salary and money purchase schemes, as well as group personal pensions and other insured arrangements. We also work alongside some of the largest firms of administrators, actuaries, consultants, brokers and professional trustees. 

We ensure that trustees are kept up to date with changing legal requirements by sending them regular updates, which highlight the impact of changes on trustees and set out the issues that they need to consider. We also publish plain English guides to the law, which seek to explain complex legislation in easily digestible terms and draw relevant regulations and guidance provisions together.

Relevant experience includes advising:

• Big Food Group Pension Fund trustees on the high profile takeover bid of the Big Food Group by Icelandic venture capitalists Baugur.  The deal was worth £326 million and the pension scheme deficit was one key factor in the viability of the takeover going ahead
• The trustees of the Courts Pension Scheme after a retailer became insolvent. The work involved a detailed review of past actions relating to the underfunded scheme
• The trustees of an underfunded scheme on a successful application to Opra to use its statutory powers to trigger a winding up of the scheme
• An action group of 150 employees in a claim to the Pensions Ombudsman against their employer and trustees following termination of the underfunded final salary scheme 
• A group of employers in a trustee application to court for directions about the extent to which the trustees could pursue current and former participating employers for contributions