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Howard Lutnick

American billionaire businessman (born 1961)

Howard William Lutnick (born July 14, 1961) is an American businessman who was appointed to serve as the United States Secretary of Commerce by the Trump Administration in February, 2025. He was formerly the head of Cantor Fitzgerald, a corporation affected directly by the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks in Manhattan, New York.

Howard Lutnick in 2024

Quotes

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  • So the night of September 11, I didn't really know who was alive and who wasn't alive. So we had a conference call. It was about 10 o'clock at night. And my employees called in. And I said, look, we have two choices. We can shut the firm down and go to our friends' funerals. Remember, that would be 20 funerals a day every day for 35 straight days. And I've got to tell you, I'm not really interested in going to work. All I want to do is climb under the covers and hug my family. But if we are going to go to work, we're going to do it to take care of our friends' families. So what do you want to do? You guys want to shut it down? Or do you want to work harder than you've ever worked before in your life? And that was the moment where the company survived.
  • Well, decisions I made were they needed to have a boss for the business. If I didn't have a leader, I shut it. And I had a division of 86 people where four people survived. And you can't really build a business back with four people. Basically, we went from being a great company that was making a million dollars a day to a company that was losing a million dollars a day. But they all have mortgages to pay, and they need to put food on their table. So one of the things I did is I would call the leaders of other companies and say, here, this guy's John. He sells this many products. He's incredibly successful. You would've never been able to hire him. He was never going to come work for you.
  • Well, it used to be that I felt that I had two lives before 9/11 and after, and it would feel sometimes that it was still so raw it felt like yesterday. And this year as I reflect on 20 years, it just doesn't feel like yesterday anymore. I employ the children of people who were killed that day. 20 years is as much time since 9/11 as I was at Cantor Fitzgerald before 9/11. So I think it feels much more separated from my life before.
  • Before 9/11, we wanted to do things on our own. And then after 9/11, I just wanted to be partners with everybody. I feel like working with other firms, working with other companies, working with other people just builds a stronger foundation beneath you. And I needed the breadth and scale of that foundation beneath me. So I'm much more attuned to working together with others, to being partners with others, to creating broad coalitions and that's what Cantor Fitzgerald has set out to do. It works really, really well with all sorts of other companies. And that's the key part of what's made us successful.
  • My father was diagnosed with lung cancer. He kept his diagnosis secret from me because he wanted to make sure I left to start college in the fall. He dropped me off at school, and a week later, he went for his first chemotherapy treatment at a local hospital. The nurse accidentally gave him the wrong dose, and he died right then and there. It was September 12, 1979, and I was 18 years old. So we all know losing one parent is heartbreaking, but losing both is something entirely different. It's life shattering.
  • I've worked at Cantor my entire career, 41 years. And rebuilding the company over the past 24 years is my greatest business achievement. After 9/11, we were down to about 1000 employees. Today, the company employs more than 14,000.
  • I think America is in a place to teach the world and to show the world what leadership is like, what a great economy is like, what taking care of its Americans is like. And to be part of that administration, to be part of this historic Trump administration is one of the great honors of my life. So I'm just looking forward to being a part of this administration, to play my part in helping drive our economy's growth and driving the support and dedication to our American people.
  • So my plan is to only serve the American people. So I will divest, and I will sell all of my interests, all of my business interests, all of my assets, everything. I've worked together with the Office of Government Ethics, and we've reached agreement on how to do that. And I will be divesting within 90 days upon my confirmation. So I should have no business interest, therefore, no conflicts of interest. I've made the decision that I've made enough money in my life. I can take care of myself, I can take care of my family. It is now my chance to serve the American people.
  • I take a very jaundiced view of China. I think they only about themselves and seek to harm us, and so we need to protect ourselves. We need to drive our innovation, and we need to stop helping them.
  • Who's Apple? It's America. We want to bring that innovation back and make sure our great companies, and let's be clear, we have them all. There's no other country as the incredible technology companies, pharma companies that we have. Let's bring those companies manufacturing and innovation and have them do that, manufacturing America with American workers. Let's try that.
  • Our great allies have taken advantage of our good nature, and they like steel in Japan and appliances in Korea. They've just taking advantage of us it's time for them to partner with us and bring that production back home. So I think we're going to work closely with our allies to increase their manufacturing productivity at home and I think your way of thinking about it, saying let's work together to do that and bring it home, I think is really important for us and really important for our workforce.
  • Well, I don't know if they were surprised or not, but if you just think for a second of what the people of Cantor Fitzgerald went through, to lose all their friends, their co-workers, all the people they worked together closely with and cared about. I mean, the emotions were very, very high. I don't think there's a single person at Cantor Fitzgerald who could say that they weren't, you know, just completely torn apart by what happened. It was the most difficult of circumstances.

Quotes about Howard Lutnick

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  • I imagine that’s how Howard Lutnick woke up on the morning of 9/11: unaware of the tragedy unfolding before him, unaware that his world—and ours—was about to change forever. But leadership is about rising to the occasion. That’s what we saw from Secretary Duffy last week. And it’s what we can expect to see—what his colleagues did see—from Howard Lutnick, who suffered the loss of his own brother and 657 other Cantor Fitzgerald employees on 9/11. Mr. Lutnick knows the kind of pain victims’ families are facing. His life story shows he is prepared to meet the gravest of challenges. And we need him to be. In a time of great power competition, we must, as Mr. Lutnick told us, ‘stay in the lead.’ America must ‘show the world what leadership is like, what a great economy is like.
  • Howard has been a dynamic force on Wall Street for more than 30 years. He joined Cantor Fitzgerald in 1983, and rapidly rose through the ranks to become President and CEO at the age of 29. Tragedy struck on September 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, and Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 of its 960 New York-based employees, including Howard's brother and his best friend. He emerged from these events with an indomitable sense of purpose to rebuild the firm to honor those lost, support their families, and become a beacon of hope for those who remained. He was an inspiration to the World - The embodiment of resilience in the face of unspeakable tragedy.
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