Squire Patton Boggs has strengthened its Pensions Practice with two senior hires and two milestone promotions. Glyn Ryland and Vivien Cockerill have joined the firm as directors of The Trustee Corporation Limited, Squire Patton Boggs’s professional trustee business, and pensions specialists Victoria Jeacock and Kate Bailey have been promoted to director within the law firm.
Mr. Ryland was head of the UK Pensions Team at Gowling WLG for 20 years, where he advised a range of pension plan and employer clients in both the UK and internationally, with plan sizes ranging from multi-billion pounds to smaller or executive pension plans. Mr. Ryland was a founder member of the Association of Pensions Lawyers' Investment Sub-Committee and he is a trustee of specialist think tank the International Longevity Centre UK. He is recognised as an ‘Eminent Practitioner’ by Chambers and Partners and is in Legal 500’s ‘Hall of Fame.’
Ms. Cockerill is an experienced pensions lawyer and professional trustee with wide experience gained from more than 30 years in the pensions industry. She currently chairs the £1.3 billion Schroders Retirement Benefits Scheme and the staff pension plans of the Wellcome Trust, where she also sits on the defined contribution governance group.
Ms. Jeacock and Ms. Bailey have established themselves as rising stars within the industry. With more than 10 years’ experience working with UK occupational pension schemes, Ms. Jeacock co-ordinates the firm’s national public sector pensions group and is a pension investment specialist, both major growth areas for the team.
Ms. Bailey, who trained and qualified with the firm, advises on all aspects of occupational pension plan management for both defined benefit and defined contribution arrangements. She has recently advised on a £1.5 billion three-into-one pension scheme merger for a global industrial products business.
Matthew Giles, head of the Birmingham Pensions team, said: “We would like to welcome Glyn and Vivien to the firm. Their considerable experience as lawyers and as trustees makes them fantastic additions to our trusteeship business.
“We are also delighted to recognise the contribution that Victoria and Kate make to the continued development of our legal advisory practice. They are talented, highly regarded pensions lawyers with a depth of specialist knowledge and expertise highly prized by our clients.”
Squire Patton Boggs’s market-leading national practice of more than 40 pensions specialists has over 500 years’ combined pensions law experience, making it one of the UK’s largest and strongest teams. Acting for more than 500 clients with over £300 billion of pension assets in the public and private sectors, the team has won 17 national industry awards in the last 17 years. These include the Educational Initiative of the Year award at the Pension and Investment Provider Awards (PIPA) 2019, and Human Resources (Specialist) Firm of the Year, The Legal 500 UK Awards 2018. The Trustee Corporation has been providing professional pension trusteeship for over 30 years. Staffed by experienced pension lawyers, its clients include Weetabix and the Royal Shakespeare Company.