Stephen Ratcliffe

Stephen Ratcliffe is a Partner in the Employment and Compensation team at Baker McKenzie. His broad employer-focused practice encompasses all aspects of employment and employee tax, as well as employee-related data protection issues. His extensive employment litigation experience includes multiple complex and high value discrimination and whistleblowing claims in the Employment Tribunal, as well as litigating cases at all levels of appeal up to and including the Supreme Court of England and Wales, and the Court of Justice of the European Union. Stephen has particular expertise in the field of equal pay, on which he has contributed chapters to the Tolley's Discrimination in Employment Handbook, and on matters relating to atypical working structures, including employee classification, taxation, and holiday pay. He is a leading authority on the taxation of termination payments, including in particular the issue of post-employment notice pay, on which he has written and spoken extensively. Stephen's practice also encompasses multi-jurisdictional aspects of employment law, including in particular issues arising on M&A transactions, post-acquisition integration, and cross-border outsourcings. The increasing relevance of data protection in the field of employment, particularly disputes and data security breaches, has naturally led to an expansion of Stephen's day-to-day practice into those areas. He is a regular adviser on not only data subject access requests, but also data protection disputes, breach reporting and remediation, and the implementation of appropriate data protection structures in the context of internal investigations.