Arthur Levitt

Arthur Levitt
Arthur Levitt at Financial Times and Goldmans Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2012
25th Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
In office July 1993 – February 9, 2001
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Richard C. Breeden
Succeeded by	Harvey Pitt
Personal details
Born	(1931-02-03) February 3, 1931 (age 86) Brooklyn, New York
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Marylin Blauner
Alma mater	Williams College (B.A.)

Arthur Levitt Jr. (born February 3, 1931) was the twenty-fifth and longest-serving Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 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 previously served as a policy advisor to Goldman Sachs and is a Director of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News.

Growing up in a Jewish family in Brooklyn, Levitt received his first exposure to the world of finance through his father, Arthur Levitt Sr., who served as New York State Comptroller for 24 years and was sole trustee of the largest pension fund in America at the time. As a boy he attended Brant Lake Camp, a summer camp for boys in the Adirondacks. While in Brooklyn, he attended and graduated from Poly Prep Country Day School in 1948. Subsequently, Levitt graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Williams College in 1952, before serving for two years in the Air Force. He first worked as a drama critic for The Berkshire Eagle, and after the Air Force, he was with Time-Life for five years before selling cattle and ranches as tax shelters.

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 (AMEX) in 1978. In 1989, he left the AMEX to serve as Chairman of the New York City Economic Development Corporation until 1993.