Stephenson Harwood

Employment, pensions, private wealth, immigration, contentious trusts and corporate tax

Naeem is a pensions specialist with significant experience in advising employers and trustees on all aspects of this technical area. He has wide-ranging expertise covering the general advisory, transactional and contentious elements of the practice of pensions law.

Naeem has advised clients across a full spectrum of issues; from complex scheme rule amendments and pensions taxation and investment issues; to High Court applications pertaining to construction and rectification of pension scheme rules; through to managing defined benefit pension risks on corporate transactions.

His general advisory practice is broad and amongst other things he has advised clients on their contingent asset arrangements, on scheme mergers, closures to future accrual and the legal aspects of the diversification of pension schemes' investment portfolios.

His litigation practice covers advising on non-adversarial applications to construe or rectify scheme rules as well as adversarial claims such as professional negligence actions against former pension scheme advisers.

He also advises on the pensions aspects of corporate transactions including the management of employer debt that may be triggered and the application of the TUPE legislation in the pensions transactional context.

Naeem is a regular contributor to various trade publications and has written on a number of topics including auto-enrolment, the statutory funding regime and the use of extrinsic contracts to vary pension rights.