Harvey Pitt has a whole lot of trouble to show for his dreams.
By Michael Carroll
August 2002
Institutional Investor Magazine
Harvey Pitt has a whole lot of trouble to show for his dreams.
One of the nation’s leading securities lawyers, he yearned to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he had spent ten years at the start of his career. After President George W. Bush failed to convince several prominent figures, including current Credit Suisse First Boston CEO John Mack, to take the post, Pitt eagerly accepted the call.
A less resilient or determined man might have wished that he hadn’t. The job has been a nightmare, and Pitt has been cast not only as an impediment to reform during an era of corporate scandal but somehow as the very symbol of a business establishment run amok with greed and rife with conflicts of interest. His critics give an obligatory doff of the hat to his intellect and honesty, then say he must go.
Must he? In this month’s cover story, “The Scapegoating of Harvey Pitt,” starting on page 38, Senior Writer Justin Schack takes a close look at Pitt’s performance since his first days on the job last September, just before the terrorist attacks that nearly crippled the nation’s markets. All in all, Schack gives the SEC chairman strong marks for performance.
Public perception is another matter. Pitt and his advisers have done a dreadful job of shaping the image of the chairman and his agency. Pitt’s faults make for good sound bites heading into the hotly contested November elections. But Schack concludes that he has been far more activist and effective than daily headlines suggest. As politicians on both sides of the aisle call for his head, that’s not a popular conclusion.
“Pitt resents having to get down in the mud and play politics. It’s not his style,” says Schack. “But whether he likes it or not, he’s in a political job, and his failure to treat it that way has obscured his considerable accomplishments.”
“You can’t always get what you want,” sang that master image maker Mick Jagger. Sometimes you’re better off that way.
