Burton H. Finkelstein practiced securities litigation for over 40 years, first with the Securities and Exchange Commission and then in private practice. Mr. Finkelstein served as special trial counsel and Assistant Director of the Enforcement Division at the SEC, where he ran the administrative, civil and criminal litigation nationwide enforcement program. In 1970, he joined the New York firm of Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon and served as a partner in their Washington, D.C. office until 1977, when he and Mr. Thompson formed the firm now known as Finkelstein Thompson LLP.
In private practice, Mr. Finkelstein participated in more than twenty securities fraud trials in cities throughout the United States, representing broker-dealers, principals and securities salesmen, attorneys, accountants, publicly and privately held companies and officers and directors of such companies. He represented entities and individuals in SEC investigations and served as special counsel to public companies in conducting internal investigations.
Mr. Finkelstein earned a B.B.A. in accounting from City College of New York in 1959 and an L.L.B. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962. After military service and brief employment as law clerk to the General Counsel of the Federal Power Commission, he began his securities litigation career as trial counsel at the SEC’s Washington Regional Office.
Mr. Finkelstein appeared as a panelist in securities litigation and enforcement seminars for the Practicing Law Institute, New York Law Journal and the American Law Institute – American Bar Association (ALI-ABA). He was an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law School from 1979 to 1998. His course was entitled “Securities and Financial Frauds-Enforcement and Litigation.”