Short Takes

Then and Now

When Levitt Reigned

Back on September 20, 2000, Arthur Levitt, the then-chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, held a hearing on auditor independence that explored many of the issues now being scrutinized daily by the nation's business dailies. We can only now speculate on whether Joseph Berardino, managing partner of Arthur Andersen, and James E. Copeland, then-CEO of Deloitte & Touche, could have imagined that the comments they shared would become part of a much larger national debate. Here's where they stood at the time.