Word: sec
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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What drives Eliot Spitzer? He says he is merely stepping in where other regulators should have but wouldn't. His critics--and there are plenty--contend that his crusades are all about political ambition. "He could have called the SEC and the general counsels of the investment banks and settled this quickly and quietly," says an executive of another Wall Street firm Spitzer has looked into. "His grandstanding and headline-grabbing aren't good." The criticism doesn't seem to faze Spitzer. "I'd rather have them say I'm opportunistic than wrong," he says...
...dissolution of the high-profile Boston contract was just one factor contributing to Edison's bad week. In an informal inquiry concluded last Tuesday, the SEC said that Edison had omitted crucial information from its filings, allowing it to report revenues from 1999 to 2002 that were 41% to 48% higher than it actually generated. The company had been counting teachers' salaries and other expenses paid by its client school districts and charter-school boards as revenue, even though none of the cash entered Edison's coffers. Because Edison also reported the funds as expenses, its bottom line was accurate...
Spitzer's sudden celebrity and his refusal to let go even now that the SEC has begun its investigation are an embarrassment for Pitt. Just nine months on the job, Pitt has had to reverse himself more often than a new driver learning to parallel park. A former lawyer for big accounting firms and brokerages, he started out on the permissive side of debates over whether accounting and auditing functions should coexist, whether the accounting industry needs its own watchdog group and whether measures are needed to rein in stock-option abuse. In each case, he relented only after...
...latest black eye for Pitt came with the revelation that on April 26 he met secretly with Eugene O'Kelly, the new chairman of accounting firm KPMG, which is under SEC investigation for its audits of Xerox. The accounting firm was Pitt's legal client for years, and the meeting prompted the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times to run editorials saying Pitt may have to go. In an interview on CNBC last Friday, Pitt called his critics "misguided" and said, "I will serve as long as the President has confidence...
...stark change from his predecessor, Arthur Levitt, who was an outspoken ally of the small investor. In the wake of Enron, Pitt hasn't had a chance to test his style, and the hard-charging Spitzer is now making many wonder if Pitt isn't plain soft. "The SEC under Harvey Pitt has been something of a reluctant regulator," says John Coffee, professor of securities law at Columbia University. Damon Silvers, associate general counsel at the AFL-CIO, which has been carping about analyst abuses for a year, says, "The SEC was a little late to this party...