Word: firmness
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...sure, Cantor hasn't escaped the biggest financial meltdown in decades unscathed. The firm was a prominent player in the trading of credit default swaps, and that market for bond insurance has been battered by the rising defaults in home loans and other debts. Worse, some politicians and regulators, irked by the huge losses rung up by AIG in CDS contracts, have talked about creating a central exchange, much like the New York Stock Exchange, where the bond insurance would trade. Some have proposed doing away with CDS all together. Those changes would significantly curtail, or wipe out, Cantor...
Cantor Fitzgerald has plenty of experience dealing with crisis. Perhaps that's why the firm, which is best known for bond trading and looked like it wouldn't survive after suffering devastating losses on Sept. 11th, is weathering the recent financial turmoil better than most. Cantor is hiring and expanding into new businesses at a time when many of its larger rivals are struggling to keep their doors open...
...businesses it plans to launch soon is a futures exchange where traders can bet on the box-office success of movies. It will never be one of Cantor's biggest businesses, but it offers a lot of symbolism. The firm gained regulatory approval for the exchange a week before the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center that killed 638 Cantor employees, which was headquartered on the top floors of the north tower. Cantor had to scrap the movie exchange shortly after the attack. But the firm's executives never let the idea go. A little more than...
...financial crisis is a great opportunity to build out our franchise," says Shawn Matthews, the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., the firm's investment banking subsidiary. "The dislocation in the financial markets has caused others to take the eye off the ball, allowing us to gain market share." The parent company is still headed by Howard Lutnick, who is the CEO of Cantor and chairman of a publicly traded subsidiary BGC Partners, which is 40% owned by Cantor. Lutnick was famously taking his son to his first day of kindergarten on September 11 and not in Cantor's offices...
...result, Cantor has been able to pick up clients, giving a big boost to its bottom line. Lutnick says his firm made more money in 2008 than ever before. He won't say how much, and since Cantor is private he doesn't have to. BGC, because it is publicly traded, does have to release its results, and officially that division lost $30 million. But exclude a one-time charge, and BGC profits come in at $105 million in 2008, up from $58 million in the year before. Analyst Michael Adams who follows BGC for brokerage firm Sandler O'Neill...