Briefing Book
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BRIEFING BOOK Data Information Knowledge WISDOM HOWARD LUTNICK is chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and is also chairman and Co-CEO of BGC Partners, a trade execution firm formerly known as eSpeed. Forbes Townhouse, New York, NY About Howard Lutnick.…………………………………………………… 2 Forbes on Lutnick “Why Howard Lutnick still hasn’t recovered from Sept. 11 th,” 08/15/05 ... 3 “About Face,” 11/12/01............………………………………….. 5 “The Electronic Future of Cantor Fitzgerald,” 10/05/01..…….. 6 “Getting Between the Wall and the Wallpaper,” 10/20/97……. 8 The Lutnick Interview……………………………………………………... 18 ABOUT HOWARD LUTNICK Intelligent Investing with Steve Forbes Howard Lutnick is chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and is also chairman and Co-CEO of BGC Partners, a trade execution firm formerly known as eSpeed. Lutnick was also chairman and CEO of eSpeed, an online operation that developed electronic financial marketplaces and trading technology. In 2008, eSpeed merged with BGC Partners. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks claimed nearly two-thirds of Cantor Fitzgerald’s New York-based employees, including Lutnick’s brother, Gary. (Lutnick himself survived only because he was taking his son, Kyle, to his first day of kindergarten.) After the attacks, Lutnick faced criticism after he ordered a cessation of salary checks to the deceased employees on Sept. 15, 2001. Lutnick still defends the decision and says it was able to put the firm in a position to provide over $180 million to help the families of the firm’s lost colleagues, making Cantor Fitzgerald’s payments at least, or more, generous than other comparable firms. Each year, the company donates 100% of their profits on September 11 th to worthy causes in honor of their employees’ lives. Lutnick graduated from Haverford College in 1983, with a degree in economics. He joined Cantor Fitzgerald that same year and quickly became mentored by the firm’s founder, Bernie Cantor. Lutnick was named president and CEO in 1991 and Chairman in 1996. Lutnick grew up on Long Island, New York, as the son of college professors, both of whom passed away while Lutnick was still a teenager. He and his wife, Allison, a former Legal Aid attorney, have three children and reside in Manhattan. - 2 - FORBES ON LUTNICK Intelligent Investing with Steve Forbes Companies, People, Ideas On the Run Daniel Kruger, 08.15.05 Why Cantor Fitzgerald's Howard Lutnick still hasn't recovered from Sept. 11 A month after the tsunami Cantor Fitzgerald LP Chairman Howard W. Lutnick was speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland about how corporations respond to disaster. Lutnick has credentials: He led his financial services firm through the aftermath of Sept. 11, when Cantor lost 658 people, three-fifths of its total workforce, among them Lutnick's brother and lots of senior management. But at the same time he was winning an international reputation as a crisis manager, he was neglecting big turmoil at home. Cantor was losing ground in Treasury trading. Privately held Cantor had long maintained a dominant position in the business of brokering trades of U.S. Treasury paper--acting as neutral middleman when, say, a big bank wanted to unload $100 million of bonds and a securities firm wanted to buy. But the business has been changing, with mouse clicks replacing phone calls. Cantor has a large piece of digital-era trading, too, by dint of controlling publicly traded Espeed. Espeed by itself is the second-largest broker of Treasury bond trades (after BrokerTec). Between them, Cantor and Espeed broker roughly 40% of the $125 trillion in annual trades of U.S. Treasury securities. In the wave of sympathy and admiration that came Cantor's way after the Sept. 11 tragedy, that share briefly rose to an estimated 70%. Within two years Lutnick frittered away all that goodwill. How? First, by introducing a new tool ironically called "price improvement." It gave buyers a chance to jump in front of other bidders on a given block of bonds- -not by bidding higher but by paying up to three extra fees on a trade. Each price improvement fee cost buyers $9 per $1 million in bonds traded versus about $2.50 per $1 million for a large firm's standard trade. (Sellers paid nothing.) Clients hated "improvement." In the 18 months after introducing the gimmick, Espeed lost an estimated 20 percentage points of market share. Next Lutnick ignored a potent threat from two rivals that merged to form BrokerTec. Key point: It charges as little as $2 for a big firm's $1 million Treasury bond trade, around 50 cents less than Espeed. - 3 - By September 2003 BrokerTec had 30% of the market for on-the-run (recently issued) Treasurys, Espeed's bread-and-butter business--and Lutnick was forced to take notice. But instead of dropping price improvement or addressing customer problems, Lutnick slapped BrokerTec with a suit, claiming it had violated Espeed's patents on such bond-trading conventions as the "work-up" (a practice that gave a trader, buying or selling at a given price, the right to execute all trading at that price until he's done) and "trading time" (the grace period a trader has to act under a work-up). But such conventions predate electronic trading by at least a generation. "People looked at it as Espeed's vain attempt to stop their momentum," says a veteran trader. A federal jury agreed:In February it found that BrokerTec had unintentionally copied Espeed, awarding no damages. Time for damage control. In June 2004 Lutnick hired the Bond Market Association's general counsel, Paul Saltzman, as chief operating officer, giving Espeed a more reasonable public face. Traders credit Saltzman with persuading Lutnick (after seven months of pleading) to drop price improvement. "When we had the time and the resources to listen to our customers, we removed it," Saltzman says. One person familiar with Lutnick's thinking says that the terrorist attack robbed him of lieutenants who could have saved him from himself--by dissuading him from initiating price improvement. Now Saltzman, by visiting trading floors and taking key customers out to dinner, is trying, he says, to "win back the trust and confidence of the dealer community." BrokerTec has a 60/40 edge in on-the-run bonds--and bigger leads elsewhere. Espeed's profits dropped 28% to $26 million last year; its stock is near a three- year low at $9. Saltzman can do only so much. Says a former Espeed employee: "[You can't] solve everything overnight if people hate you." - 4 - Follow-Through Susan Adams, Forbes Magazine, 11.12.01 About-Face Cantor Fitzgerald Chief Executive Howard Lutnick has finally decided to be more generous to the families of employees who died in the World Trade Center attack. Shortly after Sept. 11 Lutnick wept openly on network television and proclaimed the firm "would do everything we can … to take care of" the families of the 700 people he says his bond brokerage firm had lost. But off camera, Lutnick was stiffing the families, as FORBES' Elizabeth MacDonald reported in television appearances. This may not surprise FORBES readers who remember our feature four years ago about Lutnick's power grab and suspect dealings at the firm. Cantor cut off salary checks four days after the attacks, effectively concluding that employees were dead even while families and rescue workers clung to hope. Cantor informed some families they would receive no health benefits after Sept. 30 and capped life insurance payments at $100,000--substantially less than the expected payout of twice annual salary (it did say early on it would expedite life insurance payments). And Cantor said it might not pay bonuses. Lutnick blamed lack of funds, but Cantor pulled in a $140 million profit last year. Two days after the attack it was back in operation. Succumbing to media pressure, Cantor said it would pay all bonuses and commissions by Thanksgiving and offer free health benefits for ten years. It will give grieving families 25% of future profits for the next five years--minus the cost of health benefits. - 5 - Companies The Electronic Future Of Cantor Fitzgerald Paul Maidment, Forbes.com, 10.05.01, 1:40 PM ET Wall Street took another small step towards getting back to business with the resumption of trading in the shares of Cantor Fitzgerald's electronic brokerage eSpeed--and gave another glimpse of what its future looks like. ESpeed's shares were last traded on Sept. 10, the day before two hijacked aircraft slammed into the World Trade Center in New York. The headquarters of the two firms high up in No. 1 WTC were destroyed with the loss of over 70% of the approximately 1,000-person staff, including many top executives. Howard Lutnick, who is eSpeed's chief executive officer and Cantor Fitzgerald's chairman, confirmed to analysts on Oct. 4 that the group's electronic technology platform was "completely intact," but that most of its telephone brokers did not survive the devastation. As a result, Cantor Fitzgerald, which operates the leading interbroker-dealer exchange for U.S. Treasuries, has halted its traditional voice trading of bonds and is conducting its business for now through its electronic arms: eSpeed for fixed income products and TradeSpark, which deals in energy products. "While the Cantor Fitzgerald voice brokerage operation has ceased, eSpeed's fully electronic market for U.S. Treasuries has been virtually unimpaired," Lutnick said. ESpeed, which was spun off from Cantor Fitzgerald in December 1999--six months after being set up--and lost $3.3 million in revenue of $66 million in the six months to June 30, will also not replace its lost World Trade Center data center, but operate instead from its other existing centers in London and Rochelle Park, N.J.