The Manchester team at Fieldfisher is well-equipped to assist its range of clients, which includes companies and trustees of significant schemes, on complex pensions schemes, day-to-day projects, and on the pensions aspects of corporate transactions of considerable value. Jeremy Harris heads up the practice from the Manchester office, with support from London’s David Gallagher. Harris is experienced in buy-in, buy-out, and benefit specification cases. Key contact Lindsay O’Farrell‘s workload includes advising on mergers and bulk transfers, while Katie Whelan advises trustees and sponsoring employers of occupational pension schemes on various pensions matters.
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Accolades
Client satisfaction: Billing & efficiency
Testimonials
Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.
- Responsiveness, quality, and attention to detail.
- Jeremy Harris - amazingly responsive, quality. Katie Whelan - great support.
- A good range of legal skills and expertise varying from the transactional to the litigious.
- Lindsay O'Farrell - an excellent Director with many years of relevant experience and a sound legal mind.
- Pragmatic, commercial, responsive, think outside the box.
- Lindsay O'Farrell and Oliver Reece are pragmatic and commercially focused, and think outside of the box when coming up with solutions with their client's interests in mind, but also that will be acceptable to other parties.
Key clients
- Trustees of the Sibelco UK Occupational Pension Scheme
- Trustees of the Cooper Consolidated Pension Plan
- Trustees of the MTL Instruments Group Pension Scheme
- Trustees of the Willsher & Quick Pension Scheme
- Trustees of the Danisco (UK) Limited Pension Plan
- Trustees of the WJB Pension Fund
- Brother International Europe Limited
- Trustees of the EDF Group of the Electricity Supply Pension Scheme
- Electricity Pensions Trustee Limited, the Scheme Trustee of the Electricity Supply Pension Scheme
- Daiichi Sankyo UK Limited
Work highlights
Acting as the lead legal advisor to Electricity Pensions Trustee Limited, the Scheme Trustee of the Electricity Supply Pension Scheme (ESPS), leading legal input into a wide range of projects, some at a Scheme-wide level and some involving specific employers.
Advised EDFG Trustee Limited, the trustee of the EDF Group of the Electricity Supply Pension Scheme, on a wide range of project-related and day-to-day issues.
Advising a healthcare company in relation to the closure of the company's multi-employer DB pension scheme to future accrual of benefits. This included advice in relation to the scope of the company's power to affect such closure under the scheme trust deed and rules and under the contracts of employment of the active members of the scheme.
Lawyers
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Practice head
Jeremy Harris; David Gallagher
Other key lawyers
Lindsay O'Farrell; Katie Whelan