Meet Wall Street Billionaire Howard Lutnick, Donald Trump’s Nominee For Commerce Secretary
Source: Howard Lutnik, Reed Alexander and Emmalyse Brownstein
Photo: Howard Lutnick has served as President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team cochair. (ANGELA WEISS/AFP)
Donald Trump has tapped Wall Street CEO Howard Lutnick for commerce secretary.
Lutnick has spent over three decades running Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment bank in New York.
See his career highlights and who could take over at Cantor Fitzgerald.
Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Wall Street investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, has been named the next US secretary of commerce for Donald Trump.
As the head of the Commerce Department, Lutnick would have sway over the economy through tariffs and trade. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be integral to Trump’s plan to raise tariffs on goods from China, a central promise of the president-elect’s bid for a second White House term.
The Wall Street veteran has spent his career at financial-services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, where he has been president and CEO since 1991. In recent years, the billionaire banker has become a key advisor to and fundraiser for the 47th president. He is cochair of the Trump transition team.
Here’s a look at Lutnick’s rise from “middle-class Long Island” to Wall Street boss and what his new role could mean for the investment bank he heads.
Who is Howard Lutnick?
In an interview on a podcast hosted by the investor Anthony Pompliano, he said that he had a “classic middle-class Long Island” childhood, with his mother working as an art teacher and his father as a history professor. His mother passed away from breast cancer when Lutnick was in the 11th grade, and his father died from cancer shortly after he started college.
He was 18 and found himself caring for his younger brother, who was 15 at the time. He also had a 20-year-old sister. He recalled being unable to cook for his siblings, so they ate boxed macaroni and cheese night after night, he shared on the podcast.
Lutnick said in the podcast that he landed his first job at Cantor Fitzgerald with the help of a family connection. He took a semester off of his studies at Haverford College to start working but eventually earned his degree in economics.
What is Cantor Fitzgerald?
Cantor Fitzgerald offers a range of services, from investment banking to sales and trading to equity research.
The firm’s website said it has raised more than $45 billion for clients through 700 deals since 2016 and that it has more than 1,150 active institutional and corporate clients. The New York City-based firm counts more than 245 professionals on its sales and trading team and cites its “core expertise” as healthcare and technology.
The firm’s asset-management arm had some $13.2 billion in assets as of the end of 2023 with investments in real estate, private markets, infrastructure, equities, and fixed income, to name a few.