Cornelia Marquardt

Dr. Cornelia Marquardt leads our European employment practice and heads the Munich office. She specialises in individual employment law, works council negotiations and restructuring work.

Cornelia has extensive experience in individual and collective employment law matters. She has advised numerous national and international companies on the employment aspects of mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures, including several cross-border deals, and in relation to restructuring, rationalisations and outsourcing projects including negotiations with works' councils and unions on social plans and tariff agreements. She also advises HR managers and managing directors of various German and international companies in their day-to-day business on all employment related law issues on an ongoing basis.

Major transactions and restructurings in which Cornelia has acted on over the recent years include the acquisition and a post-merger integration of Dresdner Allianz Bausparkasse and VVB, two German home savings bank formerly belonging to Commerzbank resp. Unicredit/Hypovereinsbank, for Wüstenrot & Würtembergische, and two Europe-wide projects for Qiagen to optimise the allocation of their personnel resources as well as various private equity deals. Further projects include the cross-border restructuring of a supplier for the semiconductor industry, the restructuring and sale of the custodian bank division of a German bank, and cost-cutting and mass dismissal procedures for a steel-working company and an international automotive supplier company.

According to Chambers Europe 2011, clients describe Cornelia as "a relationship manager who maintains quality at a very high level. She's a brilliant communicator - she never lets you down. And she's an extremely good analyst." Chambers Europe 2013 praised her "for her ability to co-ordinate cross-border company reorganisations". 

Cornelia gained her law degree in 1997 and – having spent some months as an intern at the Superior Court of San Francisco, California – was admitted as a lawyer in Germany in 1999. She finalised her doctoral thesis on employment law in 2001 and received her practical degree as a specialist lawyer for employment law (Fachanwältin für Arbeitsrecht) in 2003. She became a partner in 2005. She is fluent in German and English.

Cornelia regularly publishes articles about new employment law issues for the Arbeitsrechtsberater, a German legal magazine on employment law, and is co-author of a standard commentary on German employment law.