By: Seth Havemeyer
Cantor Fitzgerald is moving its operations division out of New York State – and releasing 76 employees.
The firings, as reported inside a filing with the state Department of Labor, are coming when other companies – most notably Citigroup and Morgan Stanley – have rolled up their sleeves in an attempt to preserve jobs.
“It isn’t clear where the Cantor jobs are going,” Crain’s New York Business reported, “though the firm has offices in dozens of cities including Atlanta, Birmingham, Ala., and Charlotte, N.C. The firm said the personnel moves will begin in September and continue through the end of the year.”
Cantor Fitzgerald is a bond broker that achieved notoriety of a sort 19 years ago when it was rocked by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Cantor CEO Howard Lutnick displayed his mettle by holding fast and keeping the firm alive. But the pandemic is yet another body blow. “An affiliated firm, BGC Partners, cut its dividend in March as quarterly earnings sank by 77%,” noted Crain’s.
The storied financial services firm was founded in 1945. It specializes in institutional equity, fixed income sales and trading, and serving the middle market with investment banking services, prime brokerage, and commercial real estate financing. It is also active in new businesses, including advisory and asset management services, gaming technology, and e-commerce. It has more than 5,000 institutional clients. In fact, Cantor Fitzgerald is one of 22 primary dealers that are authorized to trade US government securities with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The firm’s 1,600 employees work in more than 30 locations, including financial centers in the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East. Together with its affiliates, Cantor Fitzgerald operates in more than 60 offices in 20 countries and has more than 8,500 employees. In 2011, Cantor’s affiliate, BGC Partners, expanded into commercial real estate services by its purchase of Newmark Knight Frank and the assets of Grubb & Ellis, to form Newmark Grubb Knight Frank.
The firms’ refusal to go out of business in the wake of the attacks has become the stuff of legend. Its corporate headquarters was on the 101st to the 105th floors of One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, only a handful of floors above the impact zone of a hijacked airliner. They were destroyed during the attacks. Every employee that reported for work that morning was killed in the attacks; 658 of its 960 New York employees[, 68.5% of its workforce, which was considerably more than any of the other World Trade Center tenants or the New York City Police Department, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department, the New York City Fire Department, or the United States Department of Defense since all stairwells leading past the impact zone were destroyed by the initial crash or blocked with smoke, fire, or debris.