Employment, Labour & Pensions
Your reliable global partner in the dynamic field of employment law
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LawLex Employment & Pensions at a glance:
- 160+ partners and 600+ lawyers worldwide
- More than 30 employment law experts ranked or recognized by Chambers
- Consistently top-ranked by JUVE in Austria and Germany for over a decade
Practice area
Antitrust, Competition and Trade
- Antitrust, Competition and Trade
- Abuse of dominance and economic dependence
- Competition and cartel investigations
- Compliance
- Digital markets
- Foreign investment screening
- Foreign subsidies control
- General EU law, free movement of goods, services and capital
- Horizontal agreements
- Merger Control
- Unfair trading practices (UTP)
- Private enforcement
- Regulatory
- State aid and EU subsidies
- Trade law and sanctions
- Vertical agreements
Banking & Finance
Commercial
Corporate Crime, Compliance & Forensics
Corporate / M&A
Dispute Resolution
Employment, Labour & Pensions
ESG – Environmental, social and governance
Intellectual Property
Public Procurement
Real Estate
Tax
TMC - Technology, Media & Communications
Successful businesses in every sector know that employment terms, conditions, and benefits are key competitive factors in today’s changing and increasingly mobile markets. The challenge of attracting and retaining talented employees has intensified, as employment relationships adapt to the age of the platform worker and the emerging impact of automation and digitalisation.
To ensure the odds are on your side, you must manage your employees and their benefits, as well as your employee representatives, such as works councils and unions. Yet most HR matters – from executive contracts and equal opportunities to restructurings, transfer of business issues, and restrictive covenants – can be complex and contradictory. Your management team may have to deal with employment and pension law across multiple jurisdictions, facing issues like European directives, court decisions, national laws, local cases, and precedents. LawLex employment law specialists can help you navigate the maze of HR regulations, policy documents, and legal complexities confronting you on a daily basis.
If your business operates across borders, additional hurdles arise. With extensive experience in international employment law, the LawLex team advises on employment issues affecting cross-border businesses, including:
- The effects of mergers, acquisitions, outsourcing, offshoring, nationalisation, and privatisation
- Works councils’ co-determination rights at international, national, or individual company levels
- Compliance (including remuneration) with national and international laws and standards
- Behaviour at work, misconduct, and discrimination
- Individual and collective dismissals and severance agreements
- The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- New forms of employment and ways of working
- Employee stock ownership schemes and pension schemes
- Wage taxes, fringe benefits, social security matters, expat regulations, and cross-border secondments
- Dispute resolution, litigation, and mediation for employment and pension matters, including labour law and trade union issues
- Employee competition and confidentiality
- Employment contracts, policies, shop agreements, and collective agreements
Because employment issues are often interconnected with corporate law, tax law, and regulatory matters, the LawLex employment team works closely with experts from other practice areas to provide comprehensive, strategic advice.
At LawLex, we guide our clients through evolving business environments, ensuring they make the most of opportunities while remaining fully compliant with employment laws and best practices.
Rethinking the workplace
Global resources at your service
CMS offers you the experience and resources of a global team of employment specialists. If your business crosses borders, the CMS Employment team of over 600 employment specialists advises on employment law issues affecting cross-border business, from the impact of mergers, to outsourcing, compliance, wage taxes and GDPR to stock ownership schemes and dispute resolution. We work at the cutting-edge of industry developments, combining deep local expertise with a global outlook. Our team members know each other well and work together often, developing a deep understanding of clients and their businesses.
One-stop-shop
Our employment specialists are sector-focused with a clear understanding of the nuances of different industries and how our advice must be structured to be as practical and commercial as possible. As well as the day-to-day, we advise clients on highly technical employment matters such as complex business reorganisations and restructurings, global outsourcings, Employment Tribunal and High Court litigation, and major corporate and commercial transactions. Employment issues require expertise in other areas, such as corporate law for restructuring cases, or tax law relating to senior management contracts and international mobility. We work closely with experts from around CMS to deliver the right one-stop-shop team every time
Case studies
Employment aspects in Asterion’s Acquisition of STEAG GmbH
Asterion Industrial Partners, a Spanish infrastructure investor, has acquired STEAG GmbH, an energy company based in Essen, Germany, for €2.6 billion.
The deal is set to close in December this year. STEAG, which includes both renewable energy (through its subsidiary Iqony) and fossil fuel operations, had been owned by Kommunale Beteiligungsgesellschaft (KSBG), representing six municipal utilities in the Ruhr district, since 2014.
A significant aspect of the sale involved employment law and pension-related matters. Out team played a key role in advising on these issues, covering strategic HR and pension concerns, both in Germany and in international jurisdictions such as Botswana, Brazil, Türkiye, and India. Prior to the sale, the company was restructured, dividing the coal and green energy divisions, with the restructuring process addressing complex employment concerns such as harmonising collective pay agreements and creating new supervisory board structures.
Advising Balfour Beatty Pension Fund on £1.7bn longevity transaction
The Trustee of Balfour Beatty Pension Fund (the Trustee) relied on the CMS multidisciplinary team to advise in relation to its £1.7 billion longevity transaction with SCOR and Zurich Assurance. The transaction aims to secure the Pension Fund against the risk of rising costs from pensioner members and their dependants living longer than expected. The members from CMS’s Pensions, Finance, Tech & Media, and Tax departments, worked closely with the Trustee and their actuarial adviser, Aon, to secure a favorable outcome for the scheme members.
Tom Scott, partner at Aon, added: “We were pleased to support the Trustee with the successful execution of this transaction, which marks a further step in the fund’s de-risking journey. The transaction is further evidence of a vibrant insurance/reinsurance market which is offering commercially attractive pricing and terms to pension schemes.”
This longevity transaction adds to CMS’s market-leading reputation in advising pension schemes on de-risking transactions. In 2021, the firm advised on 23 de-risking transactions, with a combined value of over £15bn. Some of the firm’s notable transactions include advising the Trustee of the WH Smith Pension Trust on a £1bn residual risks buy-in with Standard Life and the Trustee of De La Rue Pension Scheme in relation to its £320m buy-in with Scottish Widows.
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We provide future-facing legal advice to help your organisation thrive. Combining local market knowledge and a global perspective, and with lawyers in locations worldwide, your organisation benefits from the expertise it needs, even across borders.
