Kenneth Langone on Standing Up to Eliot Spitzer

Eliot Spitzer held a huge press conference in May 2004. Not only was he suing [former NYSE Chairman Richard] Grasso, the attorney general was going after me for $18 million, claiming I’d misled everybody as chairman of the comp committee. On the Friday before, Spitzer called my lawyer to get a settlement. I wouldn’t do it. I thought Grasso was worth what we paid him. In 1982 the NYSE board had put in a pension system to encourage people to stay there as a career. Dick Grasso had started out as an $82.50-a-week clerk. He stayed 37 years. He’d been chairman for eight of them, and his record was flawless.

Spitzer was after everybody at that point. I kept assuring Dick that we’d win: The facts were on our side. Spitzer left office, and the case had not been adjudicated. Andrew Cuomo took over the job. So Dick and I meet in Cuomo’s office with our lawyers. Andrew starts by saying, “We’ve got to settle this.” By the end, I’m kind of emotional. “I don’t care what everybody else in this room does. You’re getting nothing from me. This may consume the rest of my life, but my children are going to know their father didn’t roll over.”