Trump, Howard Lutnick & Cantor Fitzgerald
Monkeys,
Thoughts on Cantor Fitzgerald’s outlook now that Howard Lutnick is off to DC as Commerce Secretary? Would love to hear from someone who's more senior (been around the industry for at least 10-15 years) on the outlook.
I know they’ve been building aggressively for the past 7-8 years. Sage Kelly (Lorello’s UBS/Jefferies HC crew) was brought on around 2016 to build the IB franchise, Pascal B for Equities (Barclays), and more recently top research analyst in Josh Schimmer from Evercore to anchor Biotech research. Are they still equity raise-only in Healthcare, or are they branching out into legit advisory?
Read some news that they’ve been airlifting coverage groups from places like Stifel (Tech) and Macquarie lately - real move to compete with Jefferies, or just window dressing?
Can Cantor get anywhere close to their archnemesis (Jefferies) in terms of size, or is this just Lutnick doing his thing?
Also, real question: will his DJ son from Stanford be spinning at White House parties?
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(From Forbes) ‘The Most Hated Guy On Wall Street’
Having rebuilt his firm after losing hundreds of employees, and his brother, on 9/11, Howard Lutnick should be one of the most respected CEOs in America. Why do so many people despise him?
On September 11, 2001, he was dropping off his oldest son on his first day of kindergarten, when a plane struck the World Trade Center, where Cantor Fitzgerald’s headquarters sat on the 101st to 105th floors. All 658 of his employees in the building that morning were killed, including Lutnick’s brother Gary, his best friend Doug, 28 sets of brothers and one set of sisters. Describing the close-knit workplace, Lutnick recalled his hiring strategy: “We had an unusual model. We only wanted to work with people that we liked.” Out of tragedy came purpose. Lutnick promised to give 25% of the firm’s profits to families of the deceased for five years, eventually shelling out $180 million.
Twenty-three years later, Lutnick still sees himself as a model of patriotism and determination. Many others do, too. When Trump announced Lutnick’s nomination as commerce secretary on Truth Social on Tuesday, he did not focus on his business acumen or trade-policy knowledge. Instead, Trump mostly recounted the 9/11 events and described Lutnick as an “inspiration to the world” and “the embodiment of resilience in the face of unspeakable tragedy.”
It’s a true, and undoubtedly inspirational, story. But Lutnick has a darker side, which emerges in court documents and conversations with people who have done business with him. For years, they say, he and his firm have been pulling money from people—clients, investors, colleagues—making Lutnick, according to one former partner, “the most hated guy on Wall Street.” His multibillion-dollar empire–which includes two publicly traded companies and a privately held investment bank—is a tangle of self-dealing, with recordkeeping issues that date back decades and infighting that continues to the present day. “The whole firm is about f——— people,” says another former employee. “It’s about squeezing people.”
Wow. this sums it all.
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