Expertise
Rachel became a Partner in Addleshaw Goddard’s pensions team in May 2015 and works across the Leeds and Manchester offices. She has 12 years’ experience advising an impressive array of trustee and corporate clients on pensions issues in both an advisory and transactional context. Her clients include Tetra Pak, the trustees of the Ibstock Pension Scheme, Shepherd Group, Carclo plc and WPP.
She is recognised as a rising star and has been ranked in the Chambers directory as the 'Star Associate' for pensions in the North on several occasions, including last year. She has particular expertise in benefit change/closure exercises, pension scheme mergers, employer debt issues, buy-in and buy-out transactions and the wind-up of occupational schemes.
Rachel also works with Jade Murray as part of the self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) and pensions products team and regularly advises SIPP providers and trustees on establishing and amending SIPPs and all day-to-day queries relating to the operation of SIPPs.
- Experience
Rachel's recent experience includes advising:
- The trustees of a £500 million pension scheme on the implications of the sale of their sponsoring employer to private equity, and negotiating a significant funding deal for the scheme as part of this process
- A large construction group on the pensions implications of a significant divestment of certain divisions of their business, which involved negotiating debt management strategies with both the trustees of the group's defined benefit (DB) scheme and the trustees of an industry-wide DB scheme, and putting a pensions bond in place
- An unincorporated association which participated in a DB master trust on the pensions implications of converting to a charitable incorporated organisation
- A global corporate on the circa £250 million insurance buy out and subsequent wind up of the DB pension scheme
- The principal employer and trustees of a large DB scheme in relation to an application under section 48 of the Administration of Justice Act 1985 to enable an error in their scheme rules to be construed in a manner which avoided a £30 million increase in scheme liabilities, and advising on the associated negligence claim against their former legal advisers
- The trustees of a multibillion-pound pension scheme in connection with a potential claim against a former investment manager
- A SIPP and small self-administered scheme administrator on a complex relief-at-source dispute with HMRC
- A FTSE 100 corporate on a major pensions project involving the closure of three DB schemes and a potential buy-out transaction of eight DB schemes with insurers
- Professional memberships
- The Association of Pension Lawyers (as part of this Rachel sits on the North-East Association of Pension Lawyers committee)