PPF announces new legal panel

• Oliver Morley to be next Chief Executive at the PPF
• Officially takes up post on 19 March 2018

The Pension Protection Fund  today (Wednesday) announced the appointment of Oliver Morley as its new Chief Executive, joining in March 2018. Oliver will join the PPF from the DVLA where he has served as Chief Executive since 2013.

Pension Protection Fund Chairman, Arnold Wagner, said:

The announcement marks the conclusion of a six month procurement process that has refined the PPF’s legal panel down from 23 to 6 leading firms. The successful firms: Gowling WLG, DWF, Herbert Smith Freehills, Hogan Lovells, Mayer Brown and Osborne Clarke, have been selected to provide expert advice across multiple disciplines. Gowling WLG, DWF and Osborne Clarke have also been selected to provide specialist services to schemes in PPF assessment therefore removing the need for a separate panel to deliver these services during this time.

PPF Director of Legal, Compliance and Ethics, Dana Grey commented: “We are delighted to announce the successful procurement of our new legal panel. This appointment is the result of a robust procurement exercise and we are confident that this panel will provide the specialist services needed to drive our legal offering at the PPF. 

“Our new streamlined legal panel will allow us to develop better working relationships with each of the successful firms to not only improve the quality of the service we receive but also to ensure we get the best value for our spend on legal services. It will also enable us to work with a core group of specialists who really understand the PPF and will partner with us to achieve our short and long term commercial objectives.”

Contracts for the new panel of firms will commence in February 2018.

Ends

Notes to editors

The Pension Protection Fund protects millions of people throughout the United Kingdom who belong to defined benefit pension schemes. If their employers go bust, and their pension schemes cannot afford to pay what they promised, the PPF will pay compensation for their lost pensions. Tens of thousands of people now receive compensation from the PPF and hundreds of thousands more will do so in the future. The PPF is a public corporation, set up by the Pensions Act 2004, and is run by an independent Board.