'The Most Hated Guy On Wall Street': The Unspoken Story Around Howard Lutnick, Trump's Pick For Commerce Secretary

[Nevilledog]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2024/11/20/the-most-hated-guy-on-wall-street-the-unspoken-story-around-howard-lutnick-trumps-pick-for-commerce-secretary/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/kCVeG

On the morning of July 27, Cantor Fitzgerald’s longtime CEO Howard Lutnick took the stage at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee, where thousands of crypto fanatics had gathered to listen to royalty from the MAGA universe, including Vivek Ramaswamy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump himself. During Lutnick’s 20-minute talk, the burly, balding 63-year-old made an impassioned defense of Tether, a cryptocurrency attached to the U.S. dollar, and announced the launch of an initial $2 billion financing business to provide leverage to Bitcoin investors. But before he began proselytizing, he retold a familiar story.

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.”

*snip*

[FSogol]

1. Total scum milking a tragedy for all it is worth.

[Mike 03]

2. Thanks for the link.

Notice how in the story unnamed sources blame the victims of his employee squeezing, saying they "weren't tough enough to deal with him" or too dumb to fully understand the 700 page agreements. Dog eat dog mentality. Every man for himself.

This article answers a lot of questions I had about this guy. I recall him from the days after 9/11. I definitely remember having a lot of empathy for the people at Cantor. My father had just retired from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, an investment banking firm that lost 57 people on 9/11 on floors next to Cantor, so I was predisposed to think highly of Cantor, since KBW is such a class act. But then he went on CNN exaggerating the number of vaccinations newborns get and claiming they cause autism. All bets are off.

My recollection is that Americans totally opened our hearts to Cantor. This is how he will pay us back for our generosity.

[musette_sf]

6. I donated to the Cantor families fund for several years

I feel so had.

[dalton99a]

3. Howard Lutnick is a con man like Trump

[BoRaGard]

4. Lutnick sounds like a total republicon

a sleazebag grifter who delights in SUCKERING people for his own profit.

[Hotler]

5. "The whole firm is about f------ people,". sound like comcast.

[kimbutgar]

7. His name was so familiar to me and I looked him up

I met him years ago in the mid 90’s at a security traders conference and he was kind of a snob then. The guy that introduced me to him also worked at Cantor and was a great guy who died on 9-11 in the Towers.

I got out my magazine about that conference and there he was !