Clients commend Pinsent Masons LLP‘s ’second-to-none’ pensions team, which is described as being formed of ‘conscientious’ and ‘proactive’ lawyers, who are led by Stephen Scholefield. The practice is particularly well-versed in advising on master trust issues, as well as defined benefit scheme winding-ups, de-risking exercises, and traditional occupational work. The ‘exceptional’ Matthew De Ferrars is a key name for risk transfer matters; Raj Sharma is the name to note for international regulatory work, while Mark Baker is the main contact for master trust cases. Stewart Murphy, the ’consistently excellent’ Alison Cribbs, and Chris Burke are also noted for their work on broader pension-related cases.
Testimonials
Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.
- ‘Mark Baker is a pleasure to work with and has built great relationships with our commercial team. Alison Cribbs is consistently excellent.’
- ‘The team are commercial, pragmatic, responsive, and reasonably priced.’
Key clients
- Lloyds Banking Group
- TPT Retirement Solutions
Work highlights
- Advised and negotiated a covenant package to mitigate the change of employer on behalf of the trustees of a £4bn+ defined benefit scheme, enabling the sponsor to introduce its internal re-organisation while ensuring the trustees maintained appropriate cover and access to monitoring the position going forward.
- Advised Scottish Widows Ltd on a £320m bulk annuity transaction in relation to the De La Rue Pension Scheme and Pensions Insurance Corporation on a series of high value and complex bulk-annuity transactions.