Virginia is a problem solver who finds practical, global solutions for clients’ thorniest legal and regulatory issues.

Virginia Tent represents public and private companies and individuals in civil litigation, as well as internal and regulatory investigations, focusing on financial services, securities, tax, antitrust, and other white collar criminal issues. Virginia has extensive experience, including in-house at a global financial institution, in navigating cross-border issues and overlapping regulatory regimes. She is fluent in German and French and has also conducted investigations in Spanish.
Virginia regularly advises clients in connection with investigations sparked by whistle-blower complaints, governmental inquiries, and unrelated legal matters. She leverages her experience investigating matters of interest to multiple regulatory regimes to design, conduct, and provide transparency to stakeholders, regulators, and authorities on high profile investigations.
Virginia also has substantial experience litigating and resolving business disputes, including contested claims of breach, investment fund and private equity matters, change of control transactions, indemnity issues, and other contractual matters. She focuses on developing and implementing strategies to manage clients’ litigation and overall risk.
Prior to joining Clark Smith Villazor, Virginia led investigations at a Swiss-based global financial institution for two years and spent 14 years in leadership roles at an international law firm.

Virginia’s representative matters include:

Regulatory, Criminal, and Investigatory Matters

• Conducting investigations on behalf of financial institutions into tax, money laundering, and corruption issues.
• Investigating the collapse of sponsored investment funds and providing evenhanded transparency to regulators and authorities on three continents, including the US, UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Singapore.
• Representing companies and individuals in contentious and high profile SEC investigations, including the successful use of a financial math expert to defeat claims of accounting impropriety in valuing non-trading assets.
• Defending companies and individuals alleged to have violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
• Coordinating global defense of individuals and companies associated with the 1MDB corruption claims.
• Advising on DOJ, SEC, FINRA, CFTC, and other federal and state regulatory investigations and proceedings into and involving financial sector related conduct.

Civil Matters

• Representing the seller in a cross-border transaction when the buyer wrongfully refused to close at the start of the Covid pandemic.
• Coordinating the defense of numerous investor claims in far-flung jurisdictions relating to frozen investment funds while the funds were under intense scrutiny from the sponsoring financial institution’s primary and secondary regulators.
• Defending and prosecuting contractual claims in connection with indemnity, change of control, and event of default provisions.
• Summary judgment on behalf of the underwriting defendant in a federal securities class action that alleged facilitation of predatory positions by hedge funds following the issuer’s IPO and subsequent bankruptcy, including disqualification of plaintiffs’ purported expert.
• Representing a global law firm in connection with malpractice claims.
• Successful defense of a public company against a hostile takeover bid, including by developing substantial evidence of misconduct with respect to the bidder’s accounting practices, its activist investor’s questionable business activities, and potential antitrust concerns.