Howard Lutnick

On May 16, 2019, Lutnick hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump at his home in Manhattan, raising some $5 million, according to the President's aide.

As of September 2018, Lutnick owns 60% of Cantor Fitzgerald, with a net worth of "at least $1.5 billion".

In 2012, Lutnick was appointed to the Haverford College Board of Managers following a term of six years as a vice-chair. Lutnick endowed five student scholarships at Haverford and funded or led the efforts to fund several campus institutions:

When Hurricane Sandy hit New York and New Jersey in October 2012, Lutnick pledged $10 million to aid families who were severely affected by the storm. Cantor Fitzgerald “adopted” 19 schools in communities that were hardest-hit and distributed $1,000 debit cards to nearly 10,000 families in neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, Staten Island, and New Jersey. Sen. Charles Schumer and other public figures appeared with Lutnick at several schools. Lutnick, with the assistance of his wife Allison, sister Edie, and team of volunteers and employees, personally distributed the debit cards to parents beginning at Public School 256 in Far Rockaway.

At the time of the September 11 Attacks, Cantor Fitzgerald's offices occupied the 101-105th floors in the World Trade Center's North Tower, just above where a hijacked plane hit the building. None of the employees who were in the Cantor offices that morning survived the attacks. In total, 658 of Cantor's 960 employees died that day, including Lutnick's brother Gary Lutnick. Lutnick himself would have been in the office as well that morning, but on September 11 he was taking his son Kyle to his first day of kindergarten.

Each year on September 11 (or the business day closest to September 11 if that day falls on a weekend), Cantor Fitzgerald and its affiliate BGC Partners hold a Global Charity Day event and pledge 100 percent of the day's revenue to charity. Since 2005, Global Charity Day events have raised approximately $113 million. Celebrities, sports stars and other notable individuals take part in the event on Cantor's and BGC's trading floors by speaking with clients throughout the day. Previous event participants have included President George Bush, President Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Lady Gaga, Venus Williams, Eli Manning, Susan Sarandon, and Prince Harry, who holds the record for the largest single Global Charity Day trade.

In 2004, Lutnick and then head of the London office Lee M. Amaitis decided to split Cantor Fitzgerald into two separate operations. Cantor would continue handling big trades through stock and bond trading desks, while a newly formed BGC Partners would offer broker-driven trading. This move enabled the two entities to grow independently of each other, but required Cantor to borrow $400 million in loans and go into debt for the first time as a company in order to properly fund BGC's initial growth. In 2008, Lutnick oversaw the merger of BGC Partners and eSpeed, a deal valued at $1.3 billion.

Lutnick placed a high value on technology early on, and in 1999 made the decision to take eSpeed, an electronic trading subsidiary of Cantor Fitzgerald, public. This electronic trading system required no brokers, and was a large part of the reason Cantor Fitzgerald was able to remain afloat when 70% of the brokers in their New York office, literally everyone who was in the office that morning, were killed in the September 11 attacks.

On December 10, 1994, Lutnick married Allison Lambert, a law associate at Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker. They have four children together, including sons Brandon and Kyle, whose first days of pre-school and kindergarten respectively fell on September 11, 2001. Lutnick was dropping his son off at his kindergarten, which caused him to be late for work, thereby saving his life.

Lutnick went on to graduate from Haverford in 1983 with a degree in economics.

Lutnick joined Cantor Fitzgerald in 1983, the same year he graduated from college. Early on, Lutnick developed a warm relationship with the firm's founder Bernard Cantor as his personal mentor. In 1991, Lutnick was named President and CEO of the company, and he became Chairman in 1996.

In 1978, Lutnick was a senior in high school when his mother died of lymphoma. The following year, Lutnick entered Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania. During his first week at school, Lutnick's father died while in a hospital being treated for colon and lung cancers. A nurse treating Lutnick's father gave him 100 times the dose of chemotherapy drugs that he was supposed to receive. Now orphans, Lutnick and his two siblings were largely abandoned by extended family members and instead relied on themselves for support. Lutnick, then 18, was forced to hire a lawyer to settle the debt his father left behind.

Howard William Lutnick (born July 14, 1961) is an American billionaire businessman, who succeeded Bernard Gerald Cantor as the head of Cantor Fitzgerald. Lutnick is the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Partners. After losing 658 employees, including his brother, in the September 11 attacks, Lutnick has become known for his charity efforts through the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, which helps to aid families of the attacks and natural disasters.

Howard Lutnick was born to a Jewish family in Jericho, Long Island on July 14, 1961, the son of Solomon Lutnick, a history professor at Queens College and Jane Lutnick, an artist. Lutnick was the middle child of the family, whose siblings were an elder sister Edie and a younger brother Gary.