Independent UK law firm Burges Salmon is pleased to announce the appointments of Steven Hull and Chris Brown as partners in its Pensions and Lifetime Savings team with effect from 1 May 2024.
Steven joins Burges Salmon from Eversheds and will continue to be based in London where he has practised for over 30 years.
With over three decades’ experience, Steven advises trustees and public and private company employers on all aspects of pensions law. His particular specialisms include advising on the pensions aspects of corporate transactions including mergers and acquisitions, public and private company take-overs and private equity buy-outs, the pensions aspects of corporate restructurings, administrations and insolvencies.
Steven also advises regularly on pension scheme restructurings including the merger of occupational pension schemes, the closure of schemes to the future accrual of benefits, changes in benefit structures, deficit reduction strategies, including asset-backed funding arrangements, reservoir trusts and escrow accounts, scheme funding negotiations including disputes before the Pensions Regulator, together with the intricacies of pensions legislation, documentary changes, trustee and corporate pensions governance.
Steven comments: "I’m thrilled to have joined the highly regarded Pensions team at Burges Salmon and I am looking forward to collaborating with my new colleagues to continue delivering on the firm's reputation for providing innovative solutions and an excellent service to its impressive roster of clients.”
Chris is promoted to partner having joined the firm in 2009 as a trainee. Chris advises trustees and private sector employers on all aspects of pensions law and his work includes pensions projects (such as bulk transfers, corporate restructuring, corporation transactions, valuation negotiations, benefit design changes, regulatory investigations, liability management exercises and risk transfer projects) as well as “business as usual” advice to trustees on their duties and interpretation of rules and legislation. He provides strategic advice to employers (including on new solutions for pension provision coming out of the Pension Schemes Act 2021) and has been a key part of the Burges Salmon teams advising on recent high-profile anti-avoidance cases. Chris has a growing interest in the impact that artificial intelligence will make on the pensions industry and is part of our specialist firm-wide AI focus group.
Chris comments: “I’m delighted to have joined the Burges Salmon partnership. I’m very fortunate to work with such fantastic colleagues and clients and I am really looking forward to my new role in our Pensions and Lifetime Savings team.”
These latest Pensions partner appointments for Burges Salmon come at a particularly exciting time of growth for its UK-wide team. In January 2024, the Pensions team welcomed professional support lawyer Mairi Carlin, whose appointment followed a series of new hires in Scotland for the firm further to the arrival of senior lawyer Helen Woodford late in 2023 and solicitors Sophie Kirk and Shannon Wright-Davies a few months earlier. Senior associate Kelly Beattie will also join in April to take the Burges Salmon Edinburgh Pensions team to six.
Richard Knight, head of Pensions and Lifetime Savings at Burges Salmon, says: “We’re really excited to confirm Chris Brown’s well-deserved promotion and to welcome a lawyer of Steven’s experience and calibre to the firm. Steven and Chris’ appointments will take us to 10 Pensions partners, and with eight other new recruits also having joined us over the last 12 months this will cement our reputation as having one of the largest Pensions teams in the country.”
The firm’s Pensions team is highly regarded in the legal industry, advising around 10 percent of the UK’s trust-based occupational pension schemes and acting on some of the most complex and high-profile cases. The firm’s pensions clients – some of whom it has represented for more than 30 years – span the private and public sectors, large commercial master trusts, not-for-profit organisations as well as religious and educational bodies, and the team continues to build upon its trusted status in the international arena, providing specialist UK legal advice to its international clients and coordinating advice across multiple jurisdictions.
Recognising that innovation in the pensions industry is vital to understanding its ever-changing landscape, the firm has brought to market a number of interactive tools to shape best practice and support clients meet their statutory requirements, including an ESG Pensions toolkit and a UK Pensions for International Companies Triage tool.