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Who

The CEO of bond trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald, Lutnick became a household name following Sept. 11th when his firm lost 657 employees in the attack on the World Trade Center.

Backstory

Raised in the middle-class Long Island town of Jericho, Lutnick lost his mother and father during his teenage years and struggled to earn enough money to stay in college at Haverford. He managed to graduate, though, and earned his first job on Wall Street when he was he hired by Bernie Cantor, the founder of the securities firm Cantor Fitzgerald and one of the men responsible for inventing the modern bond market in the 1970s. Lutnick became Cantor's protégé and quickly rose through the ranks. By 29, Cantor had appointed him president of the company and his heir apparent.

Lutnick's career took a turn in the mid-'90s when Cantor was diagnosed with advanced kidney disease and hospitalized. Seeking to take control of the firm, Lutnick tried to have Cantor declared incompetent after he was placed on life support, and a vicious legal battle with his mentor's wife, Iris Cantor, soon followed. Cantor died in 1996 and the matter was eventually settled—Iris (represented by attorney Barry Slotnick) agreed to relinquish control of her late husband's stake for the sum of $120 million. With the legal morass behind him, Lutnick seemed to be sitting pretty by the time September 2001 rolled around. He was 40, the CEO of a rapidly growing firm, and estimated to be worth half a billion dollars.

Of note

On September 11, 2001, Cantor Fitzgerald lost two-thirds of its employees—657 people—in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Not a single Cantor employee who had reached the firm's offices on the topmost floors of 1 World Trade—including Lutnick's younger brother, Gary—survived, and 95% of the firm's bond brokers died. (Lutnick himself survived only because he had taken his young son, Kyle, to his first day of kindergarten.) The tragedy transformed the fast-talking, ruthless bond trader into a sympathetic figure in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. But the goodwill didn't last long. After it was revealed that the hard-nosed CEO had, just days later, cut off paychecks to Cantor employees who had perished in the attacks—he explained he had to save cash to keep the business afloat—Lutnick was immediately turned into a Dickensian villain. But keep the firm afloat he most certainly did. After the hoopla died down and the public relations disaster subsided, Lutnick went back to work and presided over an extraordinary revival, returning Cantor Fitzgerald to profitability the very next quarter. Today, the company is substantially larger than it was before the attacks, with more than 3,000 employees in 41 offices around the world.

Pet cause

Lutnick has delivered on his pledge to give 25 percent of the company's profits for five years to the families of those who died on Sept. 11th—a total of more than $180 million through the end of 2006. He's been less successful with his offer to contribute $25 million to the $300 million cost of a Sept. 11th memorial at Ground Zero. He made the pledge on the condition the names of those who died were grouped by company. Mayor Bloomberg turned him down.

Personal

Lutnick and wife Allison, a former Legal Aid lawyer, have three children: Kyle, Brandon and Casey. The Lutnicks live on the Upper East Side and spend summers at a 15,000-square-foot house in Bridgehampton that Lutnick purchased for $15 million.