Aon Hewitt has advised on the buyout of the CTL Engineering Pension Scheme. Eversheds LLP, the international law firm, advised on the legal aspects of the deal.
CTL Engineering is a full service consulting engineering, testing, inspection, and analytical services company. Its pension scheme has 115 members and has assets of £12 million. Working with the trustees, Aon Hewitt ran a competitive broking process for the scheme, resulting in the appointment of Aviva - based on both price and on due diligence advice - and agreed a timetable to wind-up the scheme completely, within three months of transacting. This is much quicker than is normal for this type of transaction.
John Baines, principal consultant in Aon Hewitt’s Risk Settlement team said:
“The scheme trustees set us the objective of completing a pension buyout transaction on the same day that a corporate transaction was taking place. This meant that the scheme trustees needed to transact quickly and to ensure that there would be no financial risk remaining after the assets were handed over. We developed a number of innovative solutions with Aviva to manage this within the constraints of the assets held.
“We also introduced the scheme trustees to Eversheds, who, using the Pathway service which we developed jointly with them, were able to use the enhanced pre-negotiated contract with Aviva. This ensured better terms for the trustees and faster contractual agreement than would normally otherwise be possible.”
Ian Booth, chair of the Trustees of the CTL Engineering Pension Scheme, said:
“Moving to buyout as quickly as possible was essential for the trustees but we wanted to make certain that the procedure was as straightforward and transparent as possible. Aon Hewitt has made the process clear for us and gave us comfort by providing thorough due diligence, while working alongside Aviva to develop a solution which gave certainty for both the sponsor and for the financial security of our scheme members.”
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