Margarita Fernández
Biography
Margarita Fernández is a Partner in Baker McKenzie’s Madrid office and a member of the Employment Practice Group. With over 20 years of experience, Margarita advises leading multinational companies on complex employment and compliance matters, combining deep expertise in labor law with a strong focus on compliance and internal investigations and cross-practice approach.
Margarita is a core member of Baker McKenzie’s Compliance Task Force, where she leads cross-practice and multi-jurisdictional projects involving employment compliance, whistleblowing systems, and forensic investigations. Her work includes designing and implementing legal risks prevention programs, providing legal advice regarding internal investigations or conductin them, advising on employment related issues affecting senior executives and complex termination processes. She regularly counsels clients on the intersection of employment law with criminal liabilities, tax data protection and corporate governance frameworks. She is member of the EMEA Whistleblowing Working Group and the EMEA Investigations Working Group.
Practice Focus
- Employment Compliance & Investigations: advising on harassment protocols, psychosocial risk prevention, whistleblower channels, etc.
- Cross-Border Projects: coordinating multi-jurisdictional employment & compliance related global projects.
- Regulatory Risk Management: integrating compliance into HR processes.
- Restructuring processes
- Complex termination process and top executive related issues, including those linked to M&A transactions
- Equity based awards
- Diversity & Inclusion and discrimination issues: developing equality plans and advising on equal pay obligations.
Representative Legal Matters
- Advising on complex investigations for major clients.
- Advising on global whistleblowing frameworks and forensic investigation protocols.
- Redundancy process in a company in the good, food & retail sector.
Professional Associations and Memberships
- Member of labor lawyers Forums FORELAB and Laborium
- Member of Compliance Association Cumplen
- Member of Women in a Legal World
- Former Co-director of SayAbility Working Group of FIDE to promote inclusion of people with disability at work
Admissions
- Spain (2003)
Education
- Comillas Pontifical University, Madrid (Law Degree specializing in Business Law)
Languages
- English
- Spanish
Firm Committee Memberships
- EMEA Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Champion
- Member of the Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Committee of the Madrid office and Co-Head of the Gender Pillar
- Mentor at the BM EMEA Inclusion Circles