learned of his being considered for the job from The Wall Street Journal. At the time Levitt came to the SEC, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) had proposed requiring companies to record stock options on their income statements, which split the accounting industry and was opposed by many in the American business community. According to a Merrill Lynch study, expensing stock options would have reduced profits among leading high-tech companies by 60% on average. Congress began to exert pressure on the FASB, and on May 3, 1994, the Senate, led by Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, offered a non-binding resolution urging FASB not to adopt the proposed rule; the vote in favor was 88–9. Concerned that insensitivity to this sentiment in Congress might threaten FASB as an independent standard setter, Levitt urged the FASB to not go ahead with the rule proposal. He later said this "was probably the single biggest mistake I made in my years at the SEC." In September 1998 at New York University, he gave a speech entitled "The Numbers Game". It addressed five ways in which corporations were managing earnings (big bath charges, creative acquisition accounting, cookie-jar reserves, materiality, revenue recognition). In his speech, Levitt advocated improving the transparency and comparability of financial statements. In 1997, the SEC under Levitt's leadership approved the exemption of some Enron partnerships from the tight accounting controls of the Investment Company Act of 1940. Without this exemption, critics maintain, the company would have been constrained by strict rules found in 1996 legislation that would have prohibited certain foreign investments and the shifting of debt to its foreign subsidiary shell companies. During Levitt's tenure at the SEC, he was widely viewed as a pro-investor advocate and received favorable press coverage. After the SEC Levitt serves on the Board of Directors for RiskMetrics Group. In 2005, Levitt was named a special advisor to the American International Group's board of directors and the board's nominating and corporate governance committee following the resignation of CEO and Chairman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, who left after an investigation into the firm's accounting practices by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Levitt oversaw an audit published in August 2006, by Kroll Inc. – where he is a consultant – describing how the City of San Diego had allowed a pension deficit of $1.43 billion. The report blamed around 30 city officials, including five incumbent council members. Kroll