Brandon Lutnick reflected on the family losses that influenced his upbringing following the September 11 attacks, including the deaths of his uncle and godfather, as Cantor Fitzgerald commemorated the 25th anniversary of the tragic event that claimed the lives of 658 of its employees in New York.
“I don’t recall 9/11. I was just three years old. What I remember is everything that happened after,” Lutnick, who is now the chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, noted in a LinkedIn message.
His father, Howard Lutnick, who was the CEO at that time, avoided tragedy because he was dropping off Brandon’s older brother, Kyle, for his first day of kindergarten rather than heading directly to the offices in the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
“My father was dropping off my brother Kyle on his first day of kindergarten, and that is the reason he was not on the 105th floor of the North Tower,” Brandon Lutnick explained.
American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower below Cantor’s offices, killing 658 of the firm’s 960 New York employees. Additionally, 61 employees at Euro Brokers also lost their lives, as mentioned by Brandon Lutnick.
Among those who perished were Howard Lutnick’s brother, Gary, and Brandon’s godfather, Doug Gardner.
“For a significant part of my childhood, I understood the implications of 9/11 even if I didn’t know the terminology for it,” he shared.
“There were names mentioned in our home long before I understood who they were.”
The attacks almost brought Cantor to its knees, as the firm occupied floors 101 through 105 of the North Tower and lost more than two-thirds of its workforce in New York.
Brandon Lutnick remarked that many outsiders anticipated the firm’s failure in the aftermath since it was facing losses of about $1 million each day.
Instead, his father committed 25% of Cantor’s profits for five years and offered ten years of health coverage to the families of the deceased employees. The total reached approximately $180 million, according to Brandon Lutnick.
Cantor also initiated a standing employment offer for the children of the lost employees, and he mentioned that hundreds of them have since been employed at the firm.
“This wasn’t merely a strategy. It was a promise, showcasing the incredible things people can achieve for one another in the face of unimaginable circumstances,” Lutnick wrote.
Remarkably, Cantor managed to restart electronic trading just days after the attacks, thanks to its eSpeed platform and the support of operations outside the World Trade Center, including assistance from employees in London who serviced New York clients.
The firm eventually rebuilt itself and diversified well beyond its initial focus on government bond brokerage, establishing BGC Partners in 2004 and becoming a primary dealer for the Federal Reserve in 2006.
Brandon Lutnick succeeded his father as chairman after Howard left Cantor in 2025 to serve as Secretary of Commerce under President Trump.
In his message for the anniversary, the younger Lutnick emphasized that as time removes the events from living memory, there’s a risk of losing sight of the individuals behind the tragic numbers.
“The danger of forgetting is not just about losing the details of a singular horrific day,” he wrote. “It’s about losing the lessons it taught us.”
Moreover, he cautioned against allowing the victims’ memories to become the subject of political disputes.
“We must prevent that revisionism from transforming those who were killed into mere symbols of partisan debates,” Lutnick urged. “They were real people.”
Cantor has continued honoring the attacks through an annual Charity Day, dedicating a day’s revenue to various charitable causes globally to remember the employees lost, as highlighted by Brandon Lutnick.
He noted that the responsibility of maintaining the memory of September 11 will increasingly rest with younger generations, like his own, who were too young to personally experience that day.
“There will come a time when no one remains who remembers seeing the towers standing that morning,” he wrote.
“That passage of time is unavoidable. But forgetting is not.”
“I don’t remember September 11th,” Lutnick concluded. “I choose to recall what followed.”
