How 9/11 changed Howard Lutnick

Por Sophia Cai — POLITICO – TOP Stories

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, hit one of President Donald Trump’s closest confidants especially hard: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Twenty five years ago, Lutnick lost his brother and 658 employees of Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm he was leading.

Lutnick marked the anniversary Thursday night at an intimate event in New York with the families of the employees he lost. He attended the 9/11 memorial in New York Friday morning; participated in Cantor Fitzgerald’s annual Charity Day, when the firm gives away the day’s trading revenue to charities; and will have dinner with his family at his son Brandon’s place in the evening.

In an interview with POLITICO Thursday, he explained how he became a more nuanced dealmaker post 9/11, when he had to rebuild Cantor Fitzgerald – which was headquartered in the North Tower – as quickly as possible. It was both because of the scope of the employees killed and the responsibility he felt to take care of their families, particularly after facing public criticism for cutting off salaries days after the attacks.

“Before 9/11, I was only about outcomes,” he said. “And after 9/11, it was about outcomes and how long is this going to take.”

Lutnick compared the urgency he felt to rebuild his firm to the rush of Trump’s second term, outlining what he wants to accomplish over the next two years: execute the trade and investment commitments already secured with Japan, Korea and Taiwan; expand semiconductor manufacturing, power generation and nuclear energy in the United States; and push forward on reshoring pharmaceuticals, autos and advanced manufacturing.

“We’ve gotten huge deals done,” Lutnick said. “Now I have to go execute on those huge deals and deliver for the American people.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How are you planning to spend September 11? 

On Thursday, we’re hosting our 25th anniversary reading of the names and showing their pictures of all of the 658 people who died, and we have the families giving talks. It was very our community. We’ll all be together.

And on Friday morning, I’ll go to the 9/11 memorial where they read the names. I’ll be there with the vice president, and then I’ll head over to the charity day of my old firm. Which I’ve done every year since we started Charity Day, and I’ll just support the people who are all giving away every penny. Last year they raised $15 million for charity. They give it to 100, 150 different charities? I know they’ll try to get a record this year, and then so I’ll go to their offices and just shake the hands of the people who are giving away all the money, and then I’m gonna have dinner at my son Brandon’s apartment. My whole family will be there. In the old days, I would host the dinner at my house, but now that my kids are older, I go to their house.

It’s been 25 years, and you’re in a very different stage in your life. How did this event shape how you operate? How much of who you are is built around the events of 9/11 and the aftermath?

Well, it really changed everything. Before September 11th, we were very much a family business. We had a rule at the company: we only want to work with people that we like. Please go through your friend group and pick the smartest ones, and let’s hire them. But we were a company. What happened after September 11th? We became a community. You know, the families of those we lost were a key to us. There, we made a job offer for all of their kids. Anybody who died on 9/11, we’ll hire their kids. My best friend Doug died 25 years ago. His son, who’s 29, joined Cantor Fitzgerald in May.

What I’ve learned is that with the perspective of 25 years, the attack was on the American way of life: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, freedom, American values, capitalism, all of it. And there are people who hate that, and those are the people who say things like America deserved it. Those are the people who hate America and our way of life. And it disgusts me. No one deserved it. No such thing as deserved to be mass murdered. A crazy person would say such a thing. Horrible person. Someone who sides with the jihadists would say such a thing.

When it comes to you personally, how has 9/11 changed you fundamentally as far as how you approach deals? What elements of you have been shaped by or have been changed by 9/11 over the past 25 years? 

After 9/11, we had a fight to rebuild it with the purpose of taking care of the families of those we lost. We had to build a successful company because otherwise you can’t pay for healthcare for the families of 658 people, right? We promised them all a minimum of $100,000. That’d be $65 million, and we ended up giving them $180 million in five years.

It made me much more of a dealmaker. Before that, if someone came to me and I’d say, ‘no, I’m okay.’ Whereas after 9/11, how quickly we could take care of these families mattered. I was willing to be partners with anybody if I thought it would be quicker to help the families, and so it changed my frame of reference to be more of a dealmaker and a partner, and that just came from the fact that all I cared about was time – time and outcomes. I’ve always been an outcome person, and with this, it changed it from just outcomes to outcomes and how long it’s going to take. When you join President Trump’s administration, and you have four years, then that time-based outcomes [approach] serves me well in this world.

Your firm, in the aftermath, operated out of these improvised locations, like a disaster recovery site, your apartment, offices provided by Bloomberg, and then you also had to hire almost immediately.

We had a line for hiring, like an assembly line. If the boss survived, I kept the division open. But I lost like 80 guys in an 84-person division. But that boss was alive. So then he would interview [a candidate], someone else would interview them, and then I would interview them. But really, my interview was, could you start on Monday? Because we had no time.

After 9/11, it was about outcomes and how long is this going to take. Time matters, and I think that has really helped me in this job because that’s what we have. We have four years, and President Trump is a dealmaker-in-chief. And he knows that I value time and the outcome, and so I see things the way he sees them, which is time, now, short time – get it done. And so I’m pushing to get things done in a short amount of time, because we have four years to accomplish his sets of goals and objectives. We’ve gotten huge deals done. Now I have to go execute on those huge deals and deliver for the American people. That’s our job.

You’ve got roughly two years left. What are the time-sensitive outcomes you hope to achieve in the next two years? 

We did these amazing deals with Japan, with Korea, with Taiwan. So with Taiwan, we’re going to bring semiconductor manufacturing to America. We had almost no semiconductor manufacturing in America. Now we’re going to get 40 percent with Taiwan and an extra 10percent with Intel. So we’re going to try to get up to 50 percent of our usage built in America, which would be an amazing goal and objective. Then I’ve got, the Japan $550 billion commitment and the Korean $350 billion to build ships in America, build power in America, build at least 100 gigawatts of power, build nuclear, restart the nuclear world, and get the nuclear supply chain of America built and going, build pipelines, build mines, build rail, check off all the choke points of America, and relieve them, and build in America. That’s my focus.

That’s a lot of building, and something like nuclear takes years.

But you order the long lead time items, you get in the ground, and you build them. So in the next two and a half years, we can get a huge amount built. The president said, “I want to get 10 nuclear reactors in the ground.” I’m going to execute that plan.

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Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories