Key facts
- Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 employees in the 9/11 attacks.
- The firm's headquarters were on the 101st through 105th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
- All 658 employees on those floors were killed when American Airlines Flight 11 struck at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001.
- Fifty contractors and visitors also died.
- Cantor Fitzgerald's affiliate acquired Euro Brokers in 2005, which lost 61 employees in the South Tower.
- The Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund was established three days after the attacks.
Cantor Fitzgerald is marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with the publication of a new book, "The Families: 9/11 Anthology of Love, Loss, and Lessons of Resilience." The firm lost more employees on 9/11 than any other company, with 658 killed when the North Tower of the World Trade Center was struck. The book, edited by Edith Lutnick and Caroline Aiken Koster of the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, includes essays, poems, letters, and speeches from families, survivors, and witnesses.
Caroline Aiken Koster, who is now general counsel of the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund and a senior corporate lawyer at the firm, was not present during the attacks. She joined Cantor Fitzgerald less than a year after 9/11, inspired by the loss of her friend Arlene Fried, who was an in-house counsel at the firm and died that day. Koster describes her 24-year journey at Cantor as a unique perspective, being both an insider and an outsider to the firm's rebuilding and resilience.
The book's structure is described as a mosaic, inspired by the firm's annual memorial service video where photographs of the lost resolve into words. The anthology aims to give a voice to the families and survivors, emphasizing that "They are still here. We are still here. They are us."
Cantor Fitzgerald's headquarters occupied floors 101 through 105 of the North Tower. All 658 employees on those floors were killed. The firm's affiliate acquired Euro Brokers in 2005, which had lost 61 employees in the South Tower. Chairman Howard Lutnick promised to rebuild the company and support the families, leading to the establishment of the Relief Fund three days after the attacks.