SEC Nominee’s Clients Prominent in Financial World
Harvey Pitt, President Bush’s nominee to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, amassed more than $3 million last year as a lawyer representing seemingly everyone in the financial world.
Pitt’s financial disclosure report shows the sweep of his clients: big brokerage houses, Big Five accounting firms, federal financial agencies and more than a few prominent corporate executives in trouble with the SEC.
If confirmed by the Senate, as is expected, Pitt will oversee the Wall Street firms and corporations he has represented since leaving the government more than two decades ago. Pitt, 56, was the SEC’s general counsel from 1975 to 1978, before going into private practice at his blue-chip law firm, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson.
The report, which must be filed by presidential nominees, was made available late Monday ahead of Pitt’s confirmation hearing Thursday by the Senate Banking Committee. In May, the White House announced Bush’s intention to nominate Pitt as chairman of the market watchdog agency, but the nomination wasn’t formally sent to the Senate until last week.
The disclosure report shows that Pitt, an acknowledged master of closed-door legal negotiating, earned partnership income of $3.05 million last year.
His wife, Saree Ruffin, has hundreds of thousands of dollars in stocks of several major companies.
It was not immediately known whether Pitt has promised to sell any investments to avoid a potential conflict of interest. Pitt and spokesmen for the Banking Committee could not be reached late Monday.
Pitt’s legal clients in just one year, 2000, included:
* America Online, American Honda Motor, Anheuser Busch, Bank of America, Bank of Montreal, Bank One, Cigna, Dell Computer, Fairchild Corp., Humana and Prodigy.
* Investment firms Bear Stearns, Datek Online, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, PaineWebber, Charles Schwab, as well as the New York Stock Exchange, the Securities Industry Assn. and the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry’s trade group.
* The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and Big Five accounting firms Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG Peat Marwick and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
* British insurer Lloyds of London.
* The Federal Home Loan Bank System and the Federal Agriculture Mortgage Corp.
* The Chamber of Commerce and the National Geographic Society.
* Stephen Case, chairman and CEO of America Online; Michael Saylor, founder and chief executive of software company MicroStrategy; and Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb, founders of Broadway theater company Livent.
