(North Tower), the building with the antenna to the left, included the corporate headquarters of Cantor Fitzgerald. on the 101st to the 105th floors of
1 World Trade Center in
Lower Manhattan (2 to 6 floors above the impact zone of
American Airlines Flight 11), were destroyed during the
September 11 attacks. At 8:46:46 a.m., eighteen seconds after the plane struck the tower, a
Goldman Sachs server issued an alert saying that its trading system had gone offline because it could not connect with the server. Since all stairwells leading past the impact zone were destroyed by the initial crash or blocked with smoke, fire, or debris, every employee who reported for work that morning located in Cantor's offices between the 101st to the 105th floors was killed in the attacks; 658 of its 960 New York employees were killed or missing, or 68.5% of its total workforce, which was considerably more than any of the other
World Trade Center tenants, the
New York City Police Department, the
Port Authority Police Department, the
New York City Fire Department, or the
Department of Defense. Forty-six contractors, food service workers, and visitors in the Cantor Fitzgerald offices at the time were also killed. CEO Howard Lutnick was not present that day, but his younger brother, Gary, was among those killed. Lutnick vowed to keep the company alive, and the company was able to bring its trading markets back online within a week. On September 19, Cantor Fitzgerald made a pledge to distribute 25% of the firm's profits for the next five years (that would otherwise have been distributed to its partners), and committed to paying for ten years of health care for the benefit of the families of its 658 former Cantor Fitzgerald, eSpeed, and TradeSpark employees. In 2006, the company had completed its promise, having paid a total of $180 million (and an additional $17 million from a relief fund run by Lutnick's sister, Edie). Until the attacks, Cantor had handled about a quarter of the daily transactions in the multi-trillion dollar
treasury security market. Cantor Fitzgerald subsequently rebuilt its infrastructure, partly through the efforts of its London office, and relocated its headquarters to
Midtown Manhattan. The company's effort to regain its footing was the subject of
Tom Barbash's 2003 book
On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11: A Story of Loss and Renewal as well as a 2012 documentary,
Out of the Clear Blue Sky. On September 2, 2004, Cantor and other organizations filed a
civil lawsuit against
Saudi Arabia for allegedly providing money to the hijackers and
al-Qaeda. It was later joined in the suit by the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Most of the claims against Saudi Arabia were dismissed on January 18, 2005. In December 2013, Cantor Fitzgerald settled its lawsuit against
American Airlines for $135 million. Cantor Fitzgerald had been suing for loss of property and interruption of business by alleging the airline to have been negligent by allowing hijackers to board
Flight 11. ==Recent history==