Minesh Rana

I am an experienced partner and qualified chartered accountant (FCA), specialising in advising clients undergoing major organisational change. My career includes working with public and private sector organisations, pension schemes, lenders, charities and regulators.

Over the past fifteen years I have been involved in projects covering employer covenant reviews, financial reviews, M&A transactions and turnarounds in the retail, health, construction, chemicals, manufacturing, insurance, transportation and logistics, media and IT sectors.

I have been involved in advising a range of stakeholders including corporate clients and pension scheme trustees on their employer covenant, Pension Scheme Act 2021 requirements, monitoring and scheme funding negotiations. I have also been on secondment in the Defined Benefit funding team at the Pensions Regulator.

Key areas of expertise include review of financial projections and business plans, financial validation, understanding the employer covenant provided to pension schemes and project managing the development of robust business plans.

Over recent years, a lot of my client work has focussed on the following areas:

• M&A Transactions - providing strategic advice to stakeholders on whether the transaction that they are looking to undertake constitutes a Type A event and whether the provisions in the Pensions Scheme Act 2021 have been met
• Working seamlessly with our market leading restructuring team to set the key options available in relation to a pension scheme where the employer is in distress
• Advising on interactions with the Pensions Regulator and broader stakeholder management in complex transaction/restructuring/actuarial valuation situations
• Advising DC Master Trusts on the authorisation process, with a particular focus on the business plan, financial sustainability and continuity strategy sections of the submission

In 2013 I set up the employer covenant practice in our Reading office which is focussed on working with clients across the Southern region of the UK. Seeing the team grow and develop has been a massive highlight and I am immensely proud of what our team has been able to achieve and the exceptional service that we provide to our clients.