Stephen is a partner in the Employment & Benefits Group specialising in Employment law. He advises major financial institutions and corporations on a wide variety of contentious and non-contentious domestic and global employment issues.

He has extensive Employment Tribunal litigation experience, having represented UK listed companies, UK subsidiaries of international businesses, private equity firms and other financial institutions and, from time to time, senior individuals in high value, and often highly sensitive, equal pay, discrimination and whistleblowing cases. He has also represented clients in High Court proceedings in relation to bonus disputes, team moves, restrictive covenants, confidentiality and database protection issues, and, most recently, obtaining permission to serve proceedings for breach of contract out of jurisdiction upon a prospective senior executive living in Russia.

He advises clients across a broad range of industries, including banking and finance, engineering, pharmaceutical, media and publishing, oil, gas and energy and telecommunications, on their day-to-day domestic and international employment arrangements covering all aspects of the employment relationship, from job offers, contracts of employment, employee handbooks, bonus and incentive plans, secondments and international assignments through to redundancy policies and procedures, restructuring proposals, disciplinary and grievance procedures, termination of employment and compromise agreements. This advice often requires a good understanding of the regulatory environment within which the client operates, the mandatory laws which may be applicable to employees in non-UK jurisdictions and expected standards of corporate governance which may be applicable.

Stephen is regularly involved in providing advice on complex employment issues arising out of mergers and acquisitions, takeovers, business transfers and outsourcings, often with cross-border effect. In particular, he has significant recent experience advising major global corporations on multi-jurisdictional outsourcing projects, with the need to co-ordinate collective consultation and the transfer of employees in both EU and non-EU countries, and advising buyers/sellers/administrators on the application of the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 ("TUPE") in relation to the sale and purchase of distressed businesses and assets. He has also worked closely with clients on the requirements to elect and negotiate with representatives of a Special Negotiating Body in respect of the establishment of a European Works Council and a Societas Europaea.

Stephen is a member of the Employment Lawyers Association, the European Lawyers Association and XBHR, the global forum for cross-border Human Resource experts. He regularly contributes to leading employment law and human resources journals and publications, and frequently presents at external seminars and webinars organised by LexisNexis, Central Law Training, Bloomberg BNA, JSB and LVA Europe. He has also devised and run Diversity and Anti-Discrimination training sessions for clients in a number of their European office locations.

Recent experience includes advising:

• Cinven on a long-running disability discrimination claim involving multiple appeals by the claimant, who requires adjustments to participate in hearings via video or telephone conference link, to the Employment Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal;
• Phytopharm plc on the successful resolution of an Employment Tribunal claim for whistleblowing brought by a former senior manager;
• EasyLink Services International Corporation and its UK subsidiary on the successful resolution of a commercial agency dispute;
• Deutsche Bank on the employment aspects of the global outsourcing of its real estate and facilities management services;
• Bertelsmann AG on the employment aspects of the outsourcing by Readers Digest of purchasing and production management services in 35 countries across North America, Europe and Asia to Arvato, a Bertelsmann group company;
• Rolls Royce, Saudi Aramco, Dow Jones, Mediobanca and other multi-national corporations on the secondment and international assignment of employees to and from the UK;
• administrators Zolfo Cooper on the TUPE and employment aspects of the sale of Peverel Group, one of the UK's largest property management companies with more than 190,000 properties under management;
• ING on the employment aspects of its acquisition of the business of Hatfield Colliery Limited from administrators KPMG;
• GSO Capital Partners on the employment aspects of its acquisition of a controlling stake in Miller Group, the UK's largest privately owned housebuilding, property development and construction business;
• leading security solutions group G4S on the employment aspects in relation to its £200 million transformation project with Lincolnshire Police Authority to provide a wide range of support services through a 10 year strategic partnership;
• leading service providers including Serco, Carillion, MITIE and Mouchel on the employment aspects of PFI/PPP projects;
• the UK subsidiary of German Prime Standard and NASDAQ-listed AIXTRON AG on the election of the representative members of the Special Negotiating Body and the SE Works Council upon its transformation into AIXTRON SE, a Societas Europaea; and
• NASDAQ and Oslo stock exchange-listed Acergy S.A. on the employment aspects of its combination with Oslo stock exchange-listed Subsea 7 Inc, to create a global leader in seabed-to-surface engineering and construction, and advising the new entity Subsea 7 S.A. on post-merger integration issues.

Bars and Courts
Solicitor of England and Wales, 1998

Education
Postgraduate Certificate in Sports Law, King’s College London, 2000
LPC, College of Law, London, 1994
LLB, King’s College London, 1993

Publications
Editor in chief of the quarterly White & Case Global Employment & Benefits Update newsletter
"Changes to Annual Compensation Limits and Proposals for UK Employment Law Reforms in 2012" - White & Case Client Insight, January 2012
"Compensation for Future Loss" - Company Secretary's Review, 28 September 2011
"New Rights for Agency Workers" - White & Case Client Insight, September 2011
"Harassment" - Company Secretary's Review, 13 April 2011
"Crisis management: Employees in Danger Zones" - Employment Law Journal, March 2011

Speaking Engagements
Chaired the JSB seminar on Employment Law in Central and Eastern Europe on 16 February 2012
Presented "An Introduction to UK Employment Law" on a Bloomberg BNA webinar on 9 February 2012
Presented "Redundancy and Age Discrimination: Danger Areas" at the White & Case client seminar "Being Prepared for Redundancies" on 18 January 2012
Presented "Restructuring and Reorganisation: Changing Terms and Conditions" at the LexisNexis Employment Law for In-house Legal Advisers conference on 5 October 2011

Citizenship
British