The Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center broke the hearts of the strongest men and it reduced them to tears. Not everyone, however, is convinced that the tears of one man, Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, were real.
When it looked as if he had broken down and cried on American television-including on the Larry King Show – recalling the some 700 employees he lost, his critics said he was faking it.
Some skeptics were the wives of his missing employees at the bond and equity-trading firm. They were mad with Lutnick because he cut off their husbands' paychecks only days after the Sept. 11 attack. It was a cruel blow while they prayed for their husbands' safety.
Lutnick was not available to comment for this story. But Peter DaPuzzo, a senior managing director at Cantor, said he thinks Lutnick's television appearances were sincere.
However, DaPuzzo said Lutnick should not have made himself available. "He was too emotional to talk," he said.
DaPuzzo also said it hurt the firm when Lutnick announced on television that Cantor had no money available to pay the victims' families. "It didn't do justice to the widows and and it didn't do justice to the firm," he added. "He should have waited."
Whether or not his tears were real, the Cantor chief executive – who lost his own brother Gary in the destruction – quickly became embroiled in an unseemly, perhaps uncharitable, controversy in the aftermath of the attack.
Lutnick's reputation as a ruthless businessman who wrested control of Cantor from his sick employer, Bernie Cantor, and fought in court with Cantor's widow over control of the company, did not help. The latest skirmish took root within hours after the twin towers were struck by hijacked planes. It was then, with the full glare of the television cameras on him, that Lutnick – who was taking his son to school when the first plane struck – broke down, saying how personally devastated he was.
Two days after the attack, Connie Chung of ABC News' 20/20, interviewed a sobbing Lutnick. He pledged that his company would look after the survivors.
"Seven hundred families. I've lost 700 families," said the teary-eyed Lutnick. "Just can't say it, I can't say it without crying."
Then Connie Chung picked up the story: "Howard Lutnick… sobbed when he pledged to take care of the families of his 700 employees who were working on the top floors of the World Trade Center when the first plane hit," she said. "But today some of those families are furious at Howard Lutnick, accusing him of a cynical PR ploy to gain sympathy, and even worse, to attract business."
Great Peformance
On the same TV program, Carol Heeran, who has four children, said her distress about her missing husband turned to anger when she saw Lutnick crying on an earlier TV broadcast. Heeran said Lutnick was not sincere. "He should have gotten a great award for his performance," said another woman.
Others were equally outspoken. "I was disgusted, you know?" said Anne Wodenshek, a mother of five children who lost her husband. "Because I didn't accept that he was dead at that point, you know? He was missing. You know, you don't have to be so brutal. They can give us at least two weeks to grieve without having to think that our husbands were gone."
While Lutnick cut off salaries, other firms that also lost employees (admittedly a smaller number), kept the missing on the payroll. Sandler O'Neill, another trading firm which lost some 66 employees, will reportedly pay salaries until yearend.
Lutnick defended his actions, suggesting that to restore the payroll, at an estimated cost of $1 million a day, could have bankrupted his firm. (Some have said that this figure was inflated, adding that even paying two weeks of base salaries would hardly have bankrupted the firm.)
"It was the most difficult, the most difficult decision because it wasn't a business decision nor a personal decision," Lutnick told ABC's Connie Chung.
"It was an everything decision," he added. "Would Cantor Fitzgerald be there for the short run or would it be there for the long run?"
Lutnick did offer to reverse himself in the days after he pulled the plug on salaries but it was not what the victims' families wanted. He says he accelerated life insurance payments and issued a new offer: setting aside 25 percent of future profits for the families. But many considered that last promise vague at best. At the same time, Lutnick donated $1 million of his own money to the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund.
Public Pressure
With public pressure building and traders feeding on hostile Cantor-related gossip, the embattled Cantor CEO finally relented.
Cantor announced a package for the victims' families that came in writing. Whether he had a change of heart, or was simply concerned about the damage his reputation and his firm would take, is not clear.
Cantor now says the victims' families would receive a share of the partnership's profits for five years. The firm said 25 percent of the money that would have been distributed to partners would be given to families of employees killed in the attacks over five years, or until they receive $100,000 each.
Each will receive a life insurance payment of double a victim's salary up to a maximum of $100,000. The victims' families have been promised health insurance for 10 years.
As the victim's families face a lonely holiday season, some now have words of charity for Howard Lutnick, himself mourning his brother's loss. "I would like to say to Howard if this is indeed what he's going to do for our families, I would like to apologize and say I'm sorry I didn't have faith in him," Anne Wodenshek, the wife of one of the victims has said. "And I'm happy that he is a man of honor, as every man should be, as my husband definitely was a man of honor."
