(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Howard Lutnick settled into a cream-colored leather seat as Trump Force One, the former president’s private jet, climbed over Nashville and banked northward. It was late July, and the Wall Street billionaire was on a mission for his friend Donald Trump.
The two were in Tennessee that Saturday to promote high-risk investments they hoped would pay off for both of them—cryptocurrencies. Then the Boeing 757 took them to Minnesota for Trump’s favorite activity: addressing cheering crowds at rallies.
After landing, the two were ferried to a hockey arena in St. Cloud, 65 miles northwest of Minneapolis, where Lutnick bounded to the stage with AC/DC’s Thunderstruck blaring over the PA system. “This place rocks!” he shouted, pumping his fist. “Let’s go!”
As a polarized nation sprints toward Election Day, Lutnick, the longtime chief executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald LP, has stepped into the role of Trump’s Wall Street cheerleader. From the Hamptons to the heartland, Lutnick, 63, is busy cultivating donors, eyeing opportunities and planning for Trump’s return to power, according to more than a dozen people familiar with his activities, most of whom asked not to be named discussing private conversations and events.
Once a guest on Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice, Lutnick today sits near the center of more concentric circles of money and power in Trump World than just about any other Wall Street executive. And he’s cemented a spot in the lucrative ecosystem around Trump and the MAGA faithful.
Six days after returning from Minnesota, Lutnick threw a fundraiser for Trump at his 40-acre estate in the posh Long Island enclave of Bridgehampton, raising $15 million. Two weeks after that, Trump appointed Lutnick to co-lead a transition team for a potential return to the White House. He’ll work with another wealthy Trump friend, former pro wrestling boss Linda McMahon—as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard—to help identify potential appointees to his administration and draft policy plans, including a crackdown on immigration. Lutnick “is one of our nation’s most successful business leaders and financial experts,” said Trump campaign adviser Brian Hughes, praising his support for Israel and his cryptocurrency expertise. Trump, he said in an emailed statement, is grateful for his “support and friendship.”
Inside the Park Avenue headquarters of Cantor Fitzgerald, the hub of a group which employs about 13,000 people globally and works across investment banking, trading and brokerage and asset management, staff wonder what’s next for their CEO in the event of a Trump victory. People who know Lutnick speculate he could become the US ambassador in Jerusalem. Others point to his four decades on Wall Street as a credential for a cabinet post—perhaps even Treasury secretary (though others have tipped hedge fund managers Scott Bessent or John Paulson for that job). “If the president asks you to serve, you have to say yes,” Lutnick told Bloomberg Television in July. He declined to comment for this story.
For prominent financiers, Trump’s promises to cut taxes for the wealthy and eliminate regulations are difficult to resist, even for those who abandoned the former president after his supporters stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. For Lutnick, the pocketbook issues of the rich—notably personal income taxes and capital-gains taxes—are front of mind, people who know him say.
But allies and critics alike see something else as well: a Donald Trump of Wall Street. For decades, white-shoe bankers curled their lips at Lutnick, in the way high-caste Manhattan looked down on Trump. Both were brushed off as outsiders, to be tolerated but never fully accepted. Both are viewed as swaggering salesmen and ruthlessly transactional dealmakers with a reputation for embracing Trump’s motto: “When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.”
Trump, a son of Queens, made an outsize name for himself with a family real estate company and then reality TV. Lutnick, raised in Jericho, on Long Island, elbowed his way to the top of Cantor Fitzgerald in 1991, less than a decade after joining the firm from college. Although it’s a major broker of US Treasuries, it lacks the cachet of Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. Lutnick insists he doesn’t compete with them. “That’s not the table I sit at. I’m different,” he told Bloomberg News in February. “If you try to be something that you’re not, OK, that’s you. That’s not me. I know who I am.”
Lutnick has a reputation for a quick temper and a forensic focus on detail, employing dozens of lawyers to workshop deals and discourage employees from taking trade secrets to competitors or disparaging his firm. He gained widespread attention after 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees, including his brother, Gary, were killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
As Ground Zero smoldered, Trump boasted that his skyscraper at 40 Wall Street had become the tallest in Lower Manhattan. (It hadn’t.) The future president later claimed he’d watched “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey cheering as the Twin Towers fell. (Fact checkers debunked that claim, too.) But Trump’s rhetoric about “radical Islamic terrorism” and his efforts to limit travel from predominantly Muslim countries appear to resonate with Lutnick. “I understand jihad,” Lutnick told the crowd in Minnesota. “And we need Donald J. Trump to crush jihad.”
Lutnick rebuilt his company after the attacks—and became a billionaire. He slowed down briefly after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2021. Now cancer-free, he’s on practically 24/7 and always seeking an edge, people who know him say. He often returns to the office around 9:30 p.m., after dinner with his family at his Upper East Side townhouse, and he expects his executives to be on call at that hour.
Lutnick gives lavishly to charities and is the biggest donor ever to his alma mater, Haverford College in Pennsylvania. And he’s become a top contributor to Trump’s campaign, giving about $11 million to the candidate and related PACs in the past year, people familiar with the matter say.
Like other pro-Trump business figures, Lutnick has turned proximity to power to an advantage for him and his company. Cantor Fitzgerald, one of the largest Wall Street firms that remain private, has been a major player in special purpose acquisition companies, the “blank-check” outfits that were the rage on Wall Street a few years ago. In 2022 his firm used a SPAC to steer Rumble Inc., a right-wing video site backed by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, onto the Nasdaq and collected fees from the deal. (Rumble’s stock has since lost over half its value, and the company is now valued at $1.6 billion.)
Cantor has advised a startup run by Omeed Malik, who says he prioritizes “patriotic” businesses, including firearms. And the company has invested in Strive Enterprises Inc., the asset management company of Woke Inc. author Vivek Ramaswamy. A MAGA favorite who’s called the Jan. 6 attack an “inside job,” Ramaswamy embraced Trump after dropping out of the 2024 race for the Republican nomination.
“Howard has a very real commitment to our country, and he’s been successful in the free-market system,” says Eric Cantor, vice chair of investment bank Moelis & Co. and a former Republican House majority leader (and no relation to the founder of Lutnick’s firm).
At the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville in July, Lutnick helped warm up the crowd for Trump, who gave a high-profile speech there. Lutnick talked up his own interests in crypto. Cantor Fitzgerald owns a “shedload” of Bitcoin, Lutnick told attendees. And his firm serves as custodian for many billions of real-world dollars supposedly backing Tether, the world’s most popular digital stablecoin. US authorities worry that the company behind Tether, Tether Holdings Ltd., might be helping bad actors sidestep the financial system and launder money. (“Tether will seize any amount of coin that is involved in illicit activity,” Lutnick said in Nashville.) People in the crypto industry have also wondered whether Tether really has all the money it claims. (“We verified every penny,” Lutnick said.)
Lutnick used the Nashville conference, the US crypto industry’s biggest get-together this year, to announce that his firm was prepared to lend $2 billion to crypto investors. Although details are scarce, a person familiar with the matter says Cantor will start accepting Bitcoin as collateral from clients and increase the lending program to tens of billions of dollars over time.
When Trump was president, he publicly scorned cryptocurrencies, saying their value is “based on thin air.” But he reversed course to win over crypto fans—and possibly make some money. Since the Nashville conference, he’s promoted a Trump Organization crypto platform, the DeFiant Ones, to his 7.6 million followers on his Truth Social website. He’s called for making the US the “crypto capital of the planet” and a “Bitcoin superpower.” And in financial disclosures, he’s acknowledged personal digital currency investments totaling $1 million to $5 million. “For too long, the average American has been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Euan Rellie, co-founder of BDA Partners, an advisory firm that competes with Cantor Fitzgerald, says the Trump MO might carry a whiff of cronyism. But it’s no surprise that Lutnick—or any other member of the so-called financial elite, such as Steven Mnuchin, who served in the first Trump administration—would use access to Trump to advance a business agenda. “If you’re part of the Mar-a-Lago inner sanctuary, there are all kinds of benefits,” Rellie says.
Still, like most savvy traders, Lutnick tends to hedge his bets. Over the years he’s written checks to both Democrats and Republicans. He hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in 2015 and even donated to Kamala Harris’ US senatorial campaign the year after, though he’s attributed that to his wife.
If Lutnick does end up in a Trump administration, the implications for Cantor Fitzgerald could be enormous. A senior job would almost certainly require him to divest his interests in an empire that includes property company Newmark Group and brokerage BGC Group (both of which have seen their share price nearly double in the past year). And Lutnick is about to launch FMX, a futures exchange that he—confidence never in short supply—says can dethrone Chicago’s world-leading CME Group.
Even if Trump loses, Lutnick stands to reap dividends from the relationships he’s cultivated within the pro-Trump camp. At the Hamptons fundraiser, he and co-hosts Paulson and Malik mingled with hedge fund magnate Bill Ackman and Robert Wood “Woody” Johnson, the pharmaceuticals heir, New York Jets football team owner and longtime Trump friend who served as ambassador to the UK. One person who attended characterized Lutnick as an impeccable host. He greeted every guest. He worked every table. And, almost certainly, he sized up every opportunity.
Lutnick knows how to play the long game. He’s been nurturing his relationship with Trump since at least 2008, when he appeared on Celebrity Apprentice in a charity auction. At the event, to benefit a nonprofit he’s supported for years—the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, which helps injured US military personnel—Lutnick didn’t hold back. He bid $100,000 to win tea with Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, and another $100,000 for dinner with Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne—though he hasn’t yet collected on the latter, according to a person familiar with the event.
In exchange for all that spending, Lutnick was given a televised toast from the evening’s auctioneer. “To the amazing man in the front row,” she gushed, “who seems to be the biggest supporter of everything in the world.” —With Max Abelson, Sridhar Natarajan, Amanda Gordon and Stephanie Lai
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