But Lutnick encouraged them to hold on to tendrils of hope if they needed it. Tuesday night he had heard his brother was at an area hospital, a rumor which later turned out to be untrue.
"But you know what? I liked it," he told his audience. "The odds of finding him are maybe one in a million. It may be a miracle, but I'll take a miracle any day."
As Bacall helped shelter the Cantor families, securities lawyer Christopher Jensen of Morgan, Lewis and Bockius, found room in his firm's New York offices south of Grand Central Station for a command center for Cantor's executives.
He praised the work of CNA, which had provided the life insurance coverage for Cantor employees, is considering treating the deaths as accidental, "to double the benefits for everybody," Lutnick continued.
To be sure, for some of the people who dealt with Lutnick last week, "it was just business," he said. "It always surprised me when I'd be announced joining the conference call, and nobody would even say, `Howard, I'm so sorry.' But I understand -- they're all focused on the business."
By Thursday evening, Cantor and eSpeed were up and running. Sales executives from branch offices in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles were calling institutional customers to say they were back in business. The system continued smoothly through Friday's trading.
And he would be willing to talk about that at great length, he told a reporter on Thursday night, on one condition: That the story include news about the creation, that same day, of the Cantor Fitzgerald Foundation to aid the families of anybody who died in Tuesday's disaster, no matter where they worked. For now, the foundation will be housed at 101 Park Avenue.
"I am donating US$1 million to the foundation," Lutnick said. He added, almost apologetically, "I want to give more -- we all do -- but we don't know yet whether we will be able to. That depends on how our business goes from here on."
RSS