Burges Salmon director recognised as leading ESG pensions lawyer

By Peter Davison

10 August 2023

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Kate Granville Smith

Bristol-based Kate Granville Smith, a director in the pensions team at law firm Burges Salmon, has been recognised as an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Distinguished Adviser in this year’s Financier Worldwide 2023 Power Players List.

The guide highlights the ten leading lawyers, based in the UK, US and Ireland, who are championing and advancing the ESG agenda for their firm and their clients.

As a director and ESG lead in Burges Salmon’s Pensions team, Kate works with clients to provide legal advice across all three pillars of ESG, developing guidance and products as well as providing bespoke training. Kate is also a member of the firm’s cross-disciplinary ESG Strategy Group.

Kate recently spearheaded the development of Burges Salmon’s Pension Schemes ESG toolkit which consolidates all ESG guidance, legislation and other useful resources, into one interactive, intuitive platform, allowing pension scheme trustees and sponsoring employers to seamlessly navigate between ESG requirements, standards, and best practice.

Burges Salmon’s Pensions team advises both pension scheme trustees and sponsoring employers. Its clients – some of whom the team has been working with for more than 30 years – span the private and public sectors, large commercial master trusts, not-for-profit organisations as well as religious and educational bodies.

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The firm’s practice has continued to build upon its trusted status in the international arena, providing specialist UK legal advice to its international clients and coordinating advice across multiple jurisdictions.

“I am grateful to Financier Worldwide for the opportunity to share how the Burges Salmon Pensions team is developing innovative solutions to helps clients understand their ESG obligations," said Kate.

"ESG is an ever-evolving topic, and we seek to work together with our clients and other industry advisers to share knowledge and champion best practice.

"Our enthusiasm for it comes from our commitment to being a responsible business and a supportive employer, values that are always reflected in the advice we give to our clients.”

By Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country.

An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts.

Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.