Cantor Fitzgerald has plenty of experience dealing with crisis. Perhaps that’s why the firm, which is best known for bond trading and looked like it wouldn’t survive after suffering devastating losses on Sept. 11th, is
weathering the recent financial turmoil better than most. Cantor is hiring and expanding into new businesses at a time when many of its larger rivals are struggling to keep their doors open.
One of the businesses it plans to launch soon is a futures exchange where traders can bet on the box-office success of movies. It will never be one of Cantor’s biggest businesses, but it offers a lot of symbolism. The firm
gained regulatory approval for the exchange a week before the Sept. 11
attack on the World Trade Center that killed 638 Cantor employees,
which was headquartered on the top floors of the north tower. Cantor had to
scrap the movie exchange shortly after the attack. But the firm’s executives
never let the idea go. A little more than a year ago, it started working on
the exchange again in earnest, and hopes to have it reapproved later this
year.
