| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Investment Services |
| Founded | 1945 |
| Headquarters | New York City, United States |
| Key people | Howard W. Lutnick (Chairman & CEO) Shawn Matthews (CEO) |
| Products | Financial Services Investment Banking Environmental Brokerage |
| Website | cantor.com |
Cantor Fitzgerald L.P. is a global financial services firm specializing in bond trading.
The firm is one of twenty primary dealers who trade U.S. government securities directly with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,[1] and is also involved in investment banking, asset management, market data, and brokerage services.
Now headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City,[2] it was formerly based in the World Trade Center—and was the company hardest hit by the September 11, 2001 attacks, losing more than two thirds of the employees based there.
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Cantor Fitzgerald's corporate headquarters and New York City office,[3][4] on the 101st-105th floors of One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan (2-6 floors above the impact zone of a hijacked airliner), were destroyed during the September 11, 2001 attacks. Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 employees (all of the employees in the office at the time of the attacks), or about two-thirds of its workforce, considerably more than any other of the World Trade Center tenants or the New York City Police Department and New York City Fire Department. The company was able to bring its trading markets back online within a week, and CEO and chairman Howard Lutnick, whose brother was among those killed, vowed to keep the company alive.
On September 19, Cantor Fitzgerald made a pledge to distribute 25 percent of the firm's profits for the next five years, and committed to paying for ten years of health care, for the benefit of the families of its 658 former Cantor Fitzgerald, eSpeed, and TradeSpark employees (profits which would otherwise have been distributed to the Cantor Fitzgerald partners).[5] In 2006, the company completed its promise, having paid a total of $180 million[5] (and an additional $17 million from a relief fund run by Lutnick's sister, Edie). [6]
Before the attacks, Cantor handled about one-quarter of the daily transactions in the multi-trillion dollar treasury security market. Cantor has since rebuilt its infrastructure, thanks in part to the efforts of its London office [7], and now has its headquarters in midtown Manhattan. The company's effort to regain its footing is the subject of Tom Barbash's 2003 book On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11: A Story of Loss and Renewal.
On September 2, 2004, Cantor filed a civil lawsuit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for allegedly providing money to the hijackers and Al Qaeda, one of a number of organizations to do so.[8] It was later joined in the suit by the Port Authority of New York.[9]
Immediately after the first attack, at approximately 8:46:46 AM, six seconds after the first plane hit the tower, a Goldman Sachs server sent out an alert page stating that a Goldman Sachs trading system server had gone offline because it was unable to interface with a Cantor server.[10][11]
Cantor Gaming is a Cantor Fitzgerald affiliate that operates race and sports books. Cantor was the first company to receive approval from the Nevada Gaming Commission to operate mobile gaming devices.[12]