John heads the Firm's employee benefits practice in London. His practice covers all forms of share incentive and pension arrangements. He has extensive experience in setting up approved and unapproved share incentive arrangements for public and private companies in the U.K. and international stock plans for U.K.-listed companies or for clients with U.K. operations. He advises on corporate and securities law requirements governing such arrangements and also on U.K. corporate governance and institutional investor requirements. In addition, John advises on all forms of corporate pension arrangements, acting for the company or for the trustees of a pension plan. His focus in recent years has been advising on the closure or wind up of corporate pension plans.

Recently, John has advised:

• a company listed on the London and Australian stock exchanges on the adoption of a long-term incentive plan providing benefits for senior executives and on the share option schemes for state and nonexecutive directors, including advice on the performance criteria, the approach to institutional investors, and the drafting of the shareholders' circular

• a U.K. private company on the setting up of share incentive arrangements through the use of EMI options to incentivise staff in the context of the restructuring of the company using shares held in a trust

• an Irish company listing on the London Stock Exchange on the adoption of an equity incentive plan for its international executives

• a U.S. corporation on the promotion of its stock purchase plan throughout Europe and the production of a prospectus under the European Prospectus Directive

• a U.S. corporation with significant U.K. operations in its negotiations with the U.K. subsidiary to reduce funding to the U.K. defined benefit plans

• a U.S. corporation on its strategy for closing down its U.K. operations and managing the U.K. pension liabilities

• a U.S. corporation in chapter 11 bankruptcy in connection with the proposed disposal of its U.K. operations and the management of the U.K. pension liabilities

• on the settlement of a dispute on benefits payable from a company pension plan to an individual before the Pensions Ombudsman; the first case settled through arbitration and

• a private company on settlement of a dispute regarding a pension promise made to an employee in the context of seeking to wind up a private company voluntarily, including negotiations with and submissions to the U.K. Revenue on the nature of the payments to settle the dispute.

John has been recognised for his employee benefits work in the most recent The Legal 500 (2007) and Chambers (2008) directories. He is a member of the Share Plan Lawyers Organisation and the Association of Pension Lawyers.