Arthur Levitt

First appointed in 1993, Arthur Levitt was the longest-serving chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He was also chairman of the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the American Stock Exchange. He co-founded the brokerage firm that eventually became Citigroup. He lives in Connecticut and is currently a director of Bloomberg LP.

Levitt grew up in a Jewish family in Brooklyn. Levitt's father, Arthur Levitt Sr., served as New York State Comptroller for 24 years and was the sole trustee of the largest pension fund in America at the time. Levitt attended Brant Lake Camp, a summer camp for boys in the Adirondacks. He attended and graduated from Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn in 1948.

He 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 brokerage firm Carter, Berlind & Weill, founded 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; 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 (AMEX) 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, which he purchased from the paper's founder, Sid Yudain, in 1986. The newspaper was eventually sold to The Economist for $15 million in 1993.