About

Although the Ford España legal team is considerably lean, made up of two lawyers and one paralegal, they nevertheless take on a wide range of legal activities including overseeing the distribution, marketing and advertising, data protection and privacy and real estate matters of Ford. Legal affairs director, Javier Vives heads the legal team and predominantly works on corporate, compliance and litigation matters that involve big cases on competition, dealers and investment work and purchasing and other matters at the factory in Valencia. Legal affairs manager, Miguel de la Fuente takes responsibility on distribution, marketing and advertising, data protection and real estate matters. Paralegal, Mamen Bravo is responsible for administrative matters and consumer cases including administrative investigations and litigation with the supervision of de la Fuente. This dynamic setting provided a highly collaborative environment for the legal team: ‘In any case, we remain opened to others’ cases and my colleague could take some of my work and the opposite. Thus, we try to share with each other the matters on which we are working, in order to exchange ideas and be up to speed in case it is necessary to replace the other at any point in time’, says Vives. The legal team also work closely with the international legal office of Ford Motor Company. An example of this is the implementation of GDPR, a process which was made in close contact with the company’s privacy lawyers in the UK: ‘We did a similar process for Portugal, with which we mirrored most of what we developed for Spain, leveraging as much as possible our multinational nature as a company. Our worldwide legal office is creating global skill teams of multijurisdictional lawyers who learn from each other’s experiences. Our cooperation with our international colleagues is increasing every year’, explains Vives. This strong mentality of collaboration has enabled the legal team to remain aware of the changes that the automotive industry is experiencing as they are fully aligned with business partners to help adapt to such changes. ‘We always work very closely with our business partners, who value us as important contributors for the success of our company’, says Vives.