The story
Founded by B. Gerald Cantor in 1945.1
Early history
Cantor Fitzgerald was formed in 1945 by Bernard Gerald Cantor and John Fitzgerald as an investment bank and brokerage business.
In 1965, Cantor Fitzgerald began "large block" sales/trading of equities for institutional customers. It became the world's first electronic marketplace for US government securities in 1972, and in 1983 it was the first to offer worldwide screen brokerage services in US government securities, becoming in time the market's premier government securities dealer.
In 1991, Howard Lutnick was named president and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald; he became chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P., in 1996.
In 1999 eSpeed, an electronic bond trading platform, became publicly traded.
Recent history
In 2003, the firm launched its fixed-income sales and trading group. Three years later, the Federal Reserve added Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. to its list of primary dealers. The firm later launched Cantor Prime Services in 2009. It was meant to be a provider of multi-asset, perimeter brokerage prime brokerage platforms to exploit its clearing, financing, and execution capabilities. A year after, Cantor Fitzgerald began building its real estate business with the launch of CCRE. Cantor's affiliate, BGC Partners, expanded into commercial real estate services in 2011 by its purchase of Newmark Knight Frank and the assets of Grubb & Ellis, to form Newmark Grubb Knight Frank.
Cantor Fitzgerald has an active special-purpose acquisition company underwriting practice, having led all banks in SPAC underwriting activity in both 2018 and 2019.
In March 2016, Sage Kelly, formerly of Jefferies & Co., joined the firm as senior managing director and head of its investment-banking division.
Cantor Fitzgerald is one of 24 primary dealers that are authorized to trade US government securities with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Read the full text
2025 was the company's year of record profitability. That same year, Howard Lutnick had been appointed as Commerce Secretary in the second Donald Trump administration and handed control of the company over to Brandon and Kyle Lutnick. According to Bloomberg News, the sons "bristle at suggestions that their new connections in Washington are contributing to that success." During his time in the White House as commerce secretary, Lutnick has pushed for projects and investments that benefitted his family. New York Times wrote in November 2025, "never in modern U.S. history has the office intersected so broadly and deeply with the financial interests of the commerce secretary’s own family, according to interviews with ethics lawyers and historians."
As of August 2026, the organization spent $10 million in political contributions in the 2026 United States elections.
From Wikipedia’s article on Cantor Fitzgerald, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5