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Helen May

Principal Associate

Helen is a Principal Associate in Eversheds Sutherland's Employment Labor and Pensions Group in Manchester. 

Helen helps trustees and employers achieve their aims while complying with the legal and regulatory framework which governs occupational pension plans.

She has worked as a dedicated pensions lawyer since she qualified in 2005.

Whether you are a trustee or an employer, Helen can advise you regarding the legal and regulatory framework for occupational pension plans. This includes advice concerning projects such as plan mergers and benefit re-designs, the management of employer debts, member complaints and the interpretation and amendment of plan rules.

A large part of Helen's role is helping trustees and employers like you by drafting and reviewing plan rules, agreements with third-party suppliers and member communications. She also regularly provides legal training to trustees to help them comply with their 'knowledge and understanding' duties.

Helen has acted for a broad range of trustees and employers during her career (including non-associated multi-employer schemes) across a number of sectors focusing on the consumer sector.

Helen's recent experience includes:

  • advising two trustee boards in the consumer sector regarding the merger of their plans into a third plan. Key to this project was our identification of certain member tax protections that would be lost upon merger. We advised on the options available to address those potential losses and negotiated the terms of the compensation package made available to affected members
  • reporting to an employer in the consumer sector on our comprehensive review of a complex rules rewrite prepared by the trustee's legal advisers. The rewrite consolidated a long series of amending deeds and updated, restructured and refined the rules. Having identified the material proposed new changes built into the re-write, we helped the employer to assess the potential risks associated with them
  • helping a trustee board in the public sector respond to an employer proposal to re-design the plan's benefit structure. This involved advising on the trustees' duties, reviewing the member communications and drafting the extensive rule amendments needed to implement the new benefit structure
  • negotiating the terms of a parent company guarantee (and associated funding documents)  provided to a trustee client in the manufacturing sector by an overseas entity
  • Recognized in The Legal 500 (2019) as a “very able and technical lawyer with strong presentation skills”
  • Member of the Association of Pension Lawyers
  • Former committee member of the Pensions Management Institute's North West Regional Group
  • Pensions Management Institute's Trustee Certificate of Essential Pensions Knowledge, 2005
  • Diploma in Legal Practice, 2002-2003
  • LLB (Hons) Law, 1999-2002
Helen May

Principal Associate

Helen May

Principal Associate

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