Employment & Benefits

Our Employment & Benefits (E&B) practice comprises some of the market’s leading practitioners across Employment, Pensions and Incentives, with over 180 lawyers located across 22 jurisdictions.  Consistently highly ranked in the legal tables in each of the three areas, we offer high quality advice on issues such as boardroom disputes, employee discrimination, executive remuneration and tax issues, a variety of occupational arrangements and complex  transactional issues.

The E&B practice works as part of an integrated team with our corporate M&A lawyers, not only in carrying out projects, but in winning them too, as most large scale M&A transactions involve HR issues which can often be critical to the outcome of a transaction.

Our Employment specialists are involved in all contentious and non-contentious matters including boardroom disputes, employee relations, HR policies and privacy, restructuring, and dispute resolution.  Our Pensions specialists handle quality advisory and litigation work for both trustees and scheme sponsors, while our Incentives team offers expert advice on equity incentive plans, employment tax issues and corporate governance in the context of reward.

Notable matters our E&B team have worked on include:

• Employment: Advising HSBC on a high-profile, sexual orientation discrimination claim following the dismissal of an employee for gross personal misconduct at work.  The case was the first high-value, City-based claim under the sexual orientation discrimination laws involving a number of novel legal questions.
• Pensions: Advising Cable and Wireless on the split of its GBP2bn pension scheme in connection with the company's demerger and recent high profile High Court litigation for Prudential in relation to pension increase practice.
• Incentives: Advising Red Football Limited on its high profile acquisition of Manchester United PLC.  The circumstances of the acquisition meant that there was a short window of time within which the employee share plan matters had to be dealt with.

You can find more information about the Employment & Benefits practice area on the main Allen & Overy website.