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Alisa Morris
Director of Marketing
212-303-1880
amorris@rssmcpa.com

RSSM ANNOUNCES PRINCIPAL PROMOTIONS

NEW YORK, NY – January 1, 2004 - Rosen Seymour Shapss Martin & Company LLP (“RSSM”), Certified Public Accountants and Profitability Consultants, announces the promotion of Don Leavy and Dean L. Surkin to principal.

Don Leavy, 57, has been promoted to Principal.  Don brings over 31 years of experience to his new role of principal.  After graduating Baruch College in 1969 he joined Eisner & Lubin as a staff accountant.  He then moved over to private accounting and became the controller/treasurer of two apparel firms for 23 years.  His role also included various human resource functions.  Don then joined RSSM in 1996 as the Director of Human Resources.

Don is the President of both the Administrative Accountants Group and The New York Chapter of the Association for Accounting Administration.  Both groups consists of accounting firms located in the New York Metropolitan Area that meet on a regular basis to discuss Human Resource issues effecting the public accounting industry.

Dean L. Surkin, JD, LLM, 51, has been promoted to Principal.  Dean L. Surkin is a tax attorney with broad-based experience in tax planning, estates and trusts, including probate matters.  Dean has served on the editorial staffs of Prentice-Hall, Matthew Bender and the Research Institute of America. He was a principal in Surkin & Handlin, P.C. until 1997, when he joined Moore Stephens, P.C., as in-house tax counsel. He has litigated major cases in the fields of taxation, probate and general commercial litigation, and once made the front page of New York Law Journal successfully defending his younger brother on a speeding ticket charge.

Dean received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973 (double major in mathematics and political science), his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1976, and his LL.M. in taxation from New York University School of Law in 1985. He is admitted to the New York State Bar (1977), the Federal District Courts of the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Tax Court.

Dean holds the faculty appointments of Adjunct Professor at Pace University Graduate School of Business, Adjunct Assistant Professor at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies (Adjunct Associate Professor, effective Fall 2003), and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Hunter College. He is the program coordinator of the Estate and Gift Taxation and Planning Certificate Program at NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies. He has presented seminars to the American Society of Women Accountants, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and many private groups.

RSSM, a member of the SEC Practice Section of the AICPA, was founded in 1956 and has over 100 professionals, including 16 partners and four principals.  We are a full service firm offering consulting services, including estate planning, litigation support and forensic accounting, management information systems consulting, business valuations, employee benefits, executive compensation, executive search and retirement planning in addition to the traditional services of accounting, auditing and tax planning and preparation.  Recently RSSM has been ranked in Public Accounting Report and Bowman’s Accounting Report as one of the Top 100 Accounting and Consulting firms in the United States and in Crain’s New York Business as one of the Top 25 CPA firms in the New York City metro area.  We can also offer services on both a national and international level through our membership in Polaris IA International, a worldwide association of independent accounting firms.

For information contact:

Alisa Morris
Director of Marketing
(212) 303-1880
amorris@rssmcpa.com