The Center for Financial Research & Analysis did 16 months of digging to come up with a new CEO: Goldman Sachs investment banker Richard Leggett, 37. What took so long? His predecessor, CFRA founder and forensic financial research pioneer Howard Schilit, besides being thorough, is not retiring -- in any sense of the word. "Howard's a very opinionated person, so it took a while to get the person he believed in," says Leggett, who will manage a staff of 20 based in Boston, London and at CFRA's Rockville, Maryland, headquarters. "I don't view myself as filling his shoes so much as working with him to take the company to the next stage." Schilit, 53, who founded CFRA in 1994, remains chairman and intends to continue preaching to investors to be alert to fraud that may be hidden in corporate reports. He has a reputation as a maverick crusader for transparency; Leggett is Wall Street all the way. He spent the past year heading the software and services sector in Goldman's investment banking division and was an equity analyst at Goldman and at Friedman Billings Ramsey for eight years before that. But Leggett shares Schilit's passion for independent research. "I always believed in the value of the work that we did as analysts, but it has been extremely frustrating that in the traditional sell-side model, it wasn't viewed as a business," says Leggett. "I've always been thinking of ways to create a truly high-value service for clients that is directly aligned with what they are looking for." CFRA , he says, can grow by "extending our client reach into law and accounting firms and regulatory agencies."