Mr Michael Aherne > Herbert Smith Freehills LLP > London, England > Lawyer Profile

Mr Michael Aherne

+44 20 7466 7527 michael.aherne@hsf.com View profile

Work Department

Employment, Pensions and Incentives

Position

Senior Associate

Career

Michael is a senior associate in the pensions division eight years’ PQE. He has experience of all aspects of pensions advisory and transactional work including contentious matters. Michael acts for both employers and trustees. 

Michael trained at Slaughter and May (qualifying into their pensions department in 2009) where he joined Herbert Smith Freehills in the summer of 2015. He co-authored IBM v Dalgleish says “reasonable expectations” are just that – but beware the Consultation Regulations, the new ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’.

Recent work highlights include the following:

EDF Energy plc on its innovative benefit change exercise affecting circa 15,000 employees in the UK. This included putting in place pensionable pay capping arrangements and establishing new CARE and DC arrangements for existing members and new joiners. The changes were agreed with four different sets of trade unions (having successfully been put to a ballot of the trade unions’ members) and three sets of trustees (one for each of the three EDF Energy pension schemes affected).

The Railways Pension Trustee Company Limited on various matters relating to the Railways Pension Scheme including advice on the validity of pensionable pay capping arrangements proposed to be put in place by participating employers in the scheme.

Board of the Pension Protection Fund on various strategic issues including potential impact of Brexit.

a FTSE 100 company on a potential Part 8 application ‘test case’ concerning the Employer Debt Regulations.

IBM United Kingdom Holdings Limited on its appeal to the Court of Appeal of the High Court decision in IBM v Dalgleish.

British American Tobacco plc on its proposed merger with Reynolds American Inc, the American tobacco company, for US$47 billion.

A confidential international consortium on the pension aspects of the proposed acquisition of a 51% interest in National Grid’s gas distribution networks business in the UK.

Memberships

Michael is a full member of the Association of Pension Lawyers and spoke at the 2016 Annual Conference in Budapest on the use of non-pensionability agreements to implement benefit changes without formally amending the rules of a scheme.