Christopher Stiles

Partner, Gowling WLG

Christopher Stiles is a partner based primarily in Birmingham who helps clients to deal with any contentious or non-contentious legal issues that may arise in relation to their pension plans with the greatest possible ease and efficiency.

Pensions can be a challenging area for employers, with pension plans that ranging from legacy arrangements that are now closed to accrual, but are still a major liability on the balance sheet, to ongoing plans that are used to reward current employees.

Christopher takes a particular interest in innovative and complex projects including asset-backed funding arrangements, liability management exercises and buy-outs.

On the trustee side, Christopher has close ongoing relationships with his trustee clients and helps them through the legal issues they face in running their pension schemes, both the day-to-day problems and larger projects including scheme mergers and wind-ups

Contributed to

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Longevity swaps

Practice Notes

This Practice Note focuses on longevity swaps as a means for defined benefit pension schemes to hedge the longevity risk they face. In particular, this Practice Note explains how longevity swaps work, what considerations are relevant to employers and trustees when deciding whether to enter into a longevity swap contract and if so, on what terms.

Pensions

Tax treatment of pensions—an introduction

Practice Notes

This Practice Note provides an overview of the tax treatment of UK registered pension schemes (in particular regarding income tax and national insurance contributions). It summarises the main tax rules applicable to member and employer contributions, scheme assets (including investment returns on those assets) and scheme benefits paid out of the scheme. It also considers the tax treatment of UK private pension arrangements that are not registered pension schemes.

Pensions

Transfer to a DB superfund—trustee and employer considerations

Practice Notes

This Practice Note focuses on the considerations applicable to trustees and employers of a defined benefit (DB) scheme when considering transferring to a DB superfund.

Pensions

VAT and pension scheme costs

Practice Notes

THIS PRACTICE NOTE APPLIES IN RELATION TO OCCUPATIONAL PENSION SCHEMESThis Practice Note contains references to case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). For guidance on whether EU judgments are binding on UK courts, see Practice Note: Assimilated law—Assimilated case law.VAT basicsThe Value Added Tax (VAT) system in the UK, which was derived from European law, is mainly set out in the Value Added Tax Act 1994 (VATA 1994).VAT is a tax on customer expenditure. A business that is registered for VAT is liable to pay across VAT to HMRC on the value of supplies of goods and services made by it, and so adds VAT onto the price it charges customers for those supplies. Such a business can claim credit for VAT it pays on goods and services used by it. The VAT that the business adds onto its prices is known as 'output tax' and the VAT it can reclaim on its purchases is known as 'input tax'.VAT only applies to 'taxable

Pensions

Conflicts of interest policy

Precedents

This Precedent is suitable for use by the trustees (or trustee company) of an occupational pension scheme to record the arrangements put in place to manage their conflicts of interest, in accordance with the Pensions Regulator’s guidance on conflicts of interest.

Pensions