Arthur Anderson is co-founder and lead principal of Morgan Anderson Consulting. Born and raised in Western Michigan, at Brown he did double degrees in chemistry and American economic history and at Yale Law School focused on intellectual property and Federal practice law.
After law school Arthur joined Fish & Neave in New York, the leading Federal litigation patent and trademark firm having major technology companies as clients. After four years with the firm, the entrepreneurial bug bit him. With the advent of NASDAQ computerized stock trading, he co-founded the first full-service discount stock brokerage firm on Wall Street at a time when investors were still charged fixed commission rates mandated by the New York Stock Exchange.
The firm could offer discount brokerage because it was not a NYSE member firm, but as the firm prospered, the NYSE tried to shut it down. Whereupon Arthur initiated a rule-making proceeding at the SEC in Washington on the grounds that NYSE’s fixed commission rates were illegal under U.S. antitrust laws. The SEC agreed. Thereafter all brokerage firms could discount fees rather than use fees mandated by the NYSE. Discounted brokerage fees became the law of the land and others entered the business, including Charles Schwab. Arthur’s focus at the firm was to head research and a technology venture investment fund, with the cable television industry a primary focus.
When Arthur decided to move on to another combination of law and technology, he joined the management team of a large NYSE-listed cable television holding company in New York as corporate counsel where he built a law department and served as corporate secretary. When the company became a takeover, he formed a two-man law firm to return to private practice in New York. The firm had a general practice with an emphasis on Federal litigation, telecommunications, and venture startups.
Fascinated by marketing and communications, Arthur left private practice to co-found Morgan Anderson Consulting New York. Given ad agencies at the time were unusually profitable as their economics to clients were opaque, the firm’s founding premise was, rather than paying an agency a fixed commission based on media spending as was the custom, it made client business sense to compensate the agency using full disclosure of the agency’s scope of work, staffing, and economics. This allowed agency compensation based on facts rather than opaque commissions and hourly rate cards. The methodology was successfully implemented with the support of Morgan Anderson’s global marketer clients, in particular IBM. This changed how global marketers paid and evaluated agencies, and Morgan Anderson became a media darling of the trade press. By 2000 fact-based agency compensation was a marketer “best practice” globally.
Arthur found his business métier at Morgan Anderson. While leading the firm he was enabled to spend time in ways that best suited him and clients. He has actualized many interests other than business, with some dating to childhood. Sailing is one (Cape Horn) and others include high-altitude hiking in remote areas (Himalayas in particular) and extended-stay travel abroad (Switzerland and Burma being favorites). Fine art is a major passion. He is active on boards of arts-related organizations and museums in the Hudson Valley and is currently preparing his legacy collection of the Historic Woodstock Art Colony as a gift to the New York State Museum, Albany.
