Arthur Levitt Quotes

Arthur Levitt, Jr. was the twenty-fifth and longest-serving Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission from 1993 to 2001. Widely hailed as a champion of the individual investor, he has been criticized for not pushing for tougher accounting rules. Since May 2001 he has been employed as a senior adviser at the Carlyle Group. Levitt also serves as a policy advisor to Goldman Sachs and as a Director of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News. In 1963, Levitt joined the relatively young brokerage firm Carter, Berlind & Weill, founded just three years earlier by Sanford I. Weill. Levitt's name was eventually added to the firm's when it was renamed Cogan, Berlind, Weill & Levitt in the mid 1960s although through a series of mergers the firm eventually evolved into Shearson Loeb Rhoades. This experience with retail customers was a source of his interest in the small investor. After sixteen years on Wall Street, Levitt became the Chairman of the American Stock Exchange in 1978. In 1989, he left the AMEX to serve as Chairman of the New York City Economic Development Corporation until 1993. Before joining the SEC, Levitt owned Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill.