European law firm Fieldfisher has announced the expansion of its existing pensions team, hiring a team of four lawyers from PwC to join its London and Manchester offices.
The team consists of one partner Oliver Reece, two directors, Lindsay O’Farrell and Daniel Fowler and one associate, Larisa Gordan.
The move comes further to a legal review by PwC and this team will continue to work in close synergy with PwC and some of their historic clients.
Partner Oliver Reece joins the firm on April 8th into the London office. Oliver has headed up the pensions legal team at PwC for nearly 18 years, and prior to this worked at the Pensions Regulator. He advises on all aspects of pensions law and regulation but with a particular focus on pensions litigation, the pensions implications of M&A and other transactions and the pensions aspects of both solvent and insolvent group restructurings.
Directors Daniel Fowler and Lindsay O’Farrell [both join later in April] [join on April 15th,and April 22nd respectively]. Lindsay will be based in Manchester and Daniel will be based in London. Lindsay has over 15 years’ experience advising trustee and corporate clients on all aspects of pensions law, including negotiations with the Pensions Regulator and clearance, pensions scheme exercises and advising public and private sector companies on compliance with automatic enrolment laws.
Daniel Fowler also has a wide range of experience, advising employers and trustees on all matters connected with pension schemes, including issuing numerous Part 8 proceedings at the High Court to understand the meaning of certain pension scheme provisions; implementing changes to the index used for uprating pension benefits; the pensions implications of employer liquidations; automatic enrolment duties; global reorganisations; and risk management exercises.
The team are also supported by associate Larisa Gordan who joined the London office earlier in the month.
Fieldfisher’s existing pensions team is well regarded in the market and renowned for their practical commercial legal advice. Head of pensions David Gallagher was appointed as Chair of the Association of Pension Lawyers (APL) back in November, and two other members of the team also sit on different sub committees of the APL. The firm’s dedication to service quality and delivery has been the driving factor in this recruitment, which is seen as an important tool to help grow the existing practice.
Whilst the new team has a corporate focus, it maintains a small number of trustee clients and all of the team have a history of providing trustee focused advice. This broad experience is essential for providing the best advice to corporate and trustee clients and is something that will perfectly complement Fieldfisher’s own service offering.
Fieldfisher’s pensions team also carries out a lot of work within the electricity industry and this was a key point of synergy for the new team, who also have expertise in this area. In addition to this, both teams have many existing trustee clients, so the hire is set to dovetail onto the current pensions offering and help to develop and expand the workload and increase resources. The team also demonstrated a fantastic ability to spot market leading trends in the work that employers have in relation to pensions schemes which aligns with Fieldfisher’s focus on providing a full service offering to clients.
Fieldfisher is a European law firm with market-leading practices in technology, financial services, energy and natural resources and life sciences.
