Areas of Practice
Languages
  • French
Education
  • Columbia Law School, J.D., 1992
  • Columbia College, B.A., 1986
Bar & Court Admissions
  • District of Columbia

Philip S. Khinda

Partner
1330 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington DC 20036
TEL: 202.429.8189
FAX: 202.429.3902

Philip S. Khinda is a partner in Steptoe’s Washington office, and focuses on internal investigations as well as securities enforcement and corporate governance matters.  He is co-head of the firm’s SEC Enforcement practice, and a member of its white-collar criminal defense practice group.  He also serves as Chair of the Ethics and Investigations Subcommittee of the American Bar Association's Corporate Governance Committee.

Mr. Khinda regularly assists corporate boards and management in conducting internal investigations, and in addressing sensitive governance and financial issues, including in connection with related government investigations and securities litigation.  His leadership of the CalPERS Special Review, its fee recovery of over $200 million for the nation's largest state pension fund, and its March 2011 public report on pay-to-play and public corruption issues are recent representative efforts.

Mr. Khinda also represents and defends public companies and institutions, their officers and directors, regulated entities, and others in matters before the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice, state prosecutors and other regulatory authorities.  He is well-known for the many government investigations and inquiries he has resolved for clients without any charges ever being filed, or any public disclosure of the government's interest ever being made.  Those clients have included a broad group of public companies, private equity firms, hedge funds, and investment advisers as well as corporate executives and public figures.  While Mr. Khinda has served as successor and settlement counsel for a variety of institutional and individual clients, no corporation or individual that he has represented from the outset of an investigation has ever been sued by the SEC or indicted.

Mr. Khinda has advised and represented individual, corporate, and board committee clients in connection with many of the most significant securities matters over the last 20 years, including publicly-disclosed government investigations and litigation involving Rite Aid, Enron, Adelphia, Global Crossing, AOL Time Warner, UBS and JPMorgan, among others, appearing before US and international securities regulators on their behalf.  Over the last five years, he has also assisted a series of pension fund and mutual fund boards and board committees that investigated matters underlying the highest-profile and most complex government investigations and actions ever to face the investment management community, including leading institutions in the mutual fund market timing matters, in the mutual fund marketing kickback matters, and in the current wave of pension fund pay-to-play and public corruption matters.  His work on two of those matters, later made public, is now reflected in business school case studies (“Doing the Right Thing” on the Bank One market timing matter, and a Columbia Business School study on CalPERS).

Earlier in his career, Mr. Khinda served as a staff attorney and senior counsel with the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, where he led a number of high-profile and sensitive investigations, including financial fraud, investment management, market manipulation, and insider trading matters.  He was previously an analyst and associate with Morgan Stanley & Company in New York.

For over a decade, Mr. Khinda has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University, and has published and taught on financial reporting and accounting, corporate governance, crisis management, securities regulation, and SEC enforcement matters.  He is a frequent public speaker on these topics as well, and his work and legal commentary have been covered widely by the press, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters, and Bloomberg, among others.  Active in international matters, and born in New York of Swiss and Indian descent, Mr. Khinda serves on the Financial Services Committee of the US-India Business Council.  He also serves as a member of the firm's Diversity Committee, and of its Multicultural Attorneys group.

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Professional Affiliations

  • Chair, Ethics and Investigations Subcommittee, American Bar Association's Corporate Governance Committee