PROFILE

Elena Romanova is a partner in the New York office of Latham & Watkins. Elena brings extensive experience in tax matters related to insurance, structured finance, securitizations, derivatives, digital assets, and other financial products. She provides clients with firsthand industry experience and a deep understanding of tax law and unique tax issues faced by issuers, private equity investors, and direct lenders as well as the financial and insurance industries.

Elena's practice focuses particularly on tax issues that arise in:

• Insurance and reinsurance industries
• Asset backed finance and securitizations, including collateralized fund obligations and collateralized loan obligations
• Structured finance
• Equity and other derivative transactions, such as structured notes, convertible debt securities, and swaps and forward contracts
• Digital assets and fintech transactions
• International taxation, including cross-border finance, withholding tax and information reporting matters, Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), the OECD Common Reporting Standard, and financial industry global tax transparency initiatives
• Excise tax on corporate stock repurchases

Elena is highly regarded within the industry for her in-house experience and deep understanding of tax law. She is regularly called upon to speak at tax conferences to discuss issues relating to financing, derivatives and to the financial industry. Elena is a former Chair of the American Bar Association Tax Committee’s Financial Institutions and Products Subcommittee and a current member of the Executive Committee of the Tax Section of the New York State Bar Association.

Prior to joining Latham, Elena was a Managing Director at Citigroup, where she served as the Global Head of the Business Tax Advisory, supporting the Institutional Clients Group and the Consumer Bank. She also practiced for several years at another major New York firm and prior to that, served as a Tax Policy Fellow at the US Treasury Department, Office of Tax Policy. During her tenure at Citi, Elena served on the Board of Directors of the Wall Street Tax Association.