Sources Say Bush Taps Pitt to Head SEC

Harvey L. Pitt, a Washington lawyer who has represented Merrill Lynch & Co., the New York Stock Exchange and major accounting firms, is President Bush’s choice to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, a White House official said Monday.

The Bush administration may announce Pitt’s nomination as early as this week, the official said. The nomination has been rumored for weeks.

Pitt, a Republican, would succeed Democrat Arthur Levitt if his nomination is approved by the U.S. Senate. Republican Commissioner Laura Unger has been filling in as acting chairwoman since February during a search that considered candidates from Wall Street, private industry and law.

“The Bush administration has not shown any tendency to be strong regulators, but I think they might be surprised by Harvey,” said former SEC Chairman Harold M. Williams, who was Pitt’s boss during former President Jimmy Carter’s administration. “He’s likely to be a conscientious enforcer, based on his deep understanding of securities laws.”

Pitt, 56, declined to comment. He was the SEC’s general counsel during the late 1970s and has since become one of the top U.S. securities lawyers. While representing securities firms and accountants, he has opposed some of Levitt’s causes on opening information to investors and dealing with auditors’ potential conflicts.

Pitt has been a critic of the SEC’s Regulation Fair Disclosure, which requires companies to make market-sensitive information available to all investors at the same time. Although it was still a proposal, he said any rule “could create a serious problem for public companies that may be made afraid to talk to analysts at all.”

Regulation FD went into effect last October. It was championed by Levitt and opposed by Unger.