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 also serves as a policy advisor to Goldman Sachs and as 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. 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.[3] 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 (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. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Levitt NYSE MKT LLC, formerly known as the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), is an American stock exchange situated in New York City, New York. AMEX was previously a mutual organization, owned by its members. Until 1953, it was known as the New York Curb Exchange.[1] On January 17, 2008, NYSE Euronext announced it would acquire the AMEX for $260 million in stock; on October 1, 2008, NYSE Euronext completed the acquisition.[2] Before the closing of the acquisition, NYSE Euronext announced that the AMEX would be integrated with the Alternext European small-cap exchange and renamed the NYSE Alternext U.S.[3] In March 2009, NYSE Alternext U.S. was changed to NYSE Amex Equities. On May 10, 2012, NYSE Amex Equities changed its name to NYSE MKT LLC.[4] These brokers often traded stocks that were speculative in nature. With the discovery of oil in the later half of the 19th century, even oil stocks entered into the curb market. By 1865, following the American Civil War, stocks in small industrial companies, such as iron and steel, textiles and chemicals were first sold by curbstone brokers. Efforts to organize and standardize the market started early in the 20th century under Emanuel S. Mendels and Carl H. Pforzheimer [1]. In 1908, the New York Curb Market Agency was established, to codify trading practices. In 1911, the curbstone brokers came to be known as the New York Curb Market, which then had a formal constitution with brokerage and listing standards. After several years of outdoor trading, the curbstone brokers moved indoors in 1921 to New York Curb Exchange Building on Greenwich Street in Lower Manhattan. In 1929, the New York Curb Market changed its name to the New York Curb Exchange. Within no time, the Curb Exchange became the leading international stock market, listing more foreign issues than all other U.S. securities markets combined. In 1953 the Curb Exchange was renamed the American Stock Exchange. Paul Kolton was named as president of the exchange in 1971, making him the first person to be selected from within the exchange to serve as its leader, succeeding Ralph S. Saul, who announced his resignation in March 1971.[5][6] In November 1972, Kolton was named as the exchange's first chief executive officer and its first salaried top executive.[7] Kolton opposed the idea of a merger with the New York Stock Exchange while he headed the exchange saying that "two independent, viable exchanges are much more likely to be responsive to new pressures and public needs than a single institution".[6] Kolton announced in July 1977 that he would be leaving his position at the American Exchange in November of that year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NYSE_MKT

• published: 03 Nov 2014
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