The September 11th attack
Firms put economics on hold as they offer relief
Bloomberg News Service
LONDON — Drugmaker Novartis AG is donating $3 million to the American Red Cross. Tiremaker Michelin & Cie. is putting up $1 million.
Associated Press
Lender UBS Warburg LLC is making office space available in Connecticut. Engineering-design company Amec Plc is advising the city of New York on cleanup and rescue — free of charge.
Shipyard workers in Germany tip their hats during a five-minute silent memorial observed nationwide two days after the attacks.
Forty-eight hours after the attacks on New York and Washington that left thousands presumed dead, companies and individuals worldwide are putting cost-consciousness to one side and offering sympathy and aid.
Cantor Fitzgerald LP, the largest broker of U.S. government securities, has been besieged with offers for help ever since a hijacked passenger jet rammed its offices in the World Trade Center, killing as many as 700 employees. Callers have offered to lend office space, staff help desks and raise money. One person even sent in a poem.
"So many companies and people have been tremendously supportive," said Claire Corrie, a London spokeswoman. "They've risen to the occasion."
Entertainment and sports companies have shelved reality-TV programs and rescheduled soccer games. The BBC Symphony Orchestra switched a concert program to more somber music. U.S. embassies in Berlin and Rome have received hundreds of letters of sympathy.
At Buckingham Palace, hundreds gathered to see the changing of the guard, which for the first time in the ceremony's 340-year history featured the playing of national anthems: "God Save the Queen" and "The Star-Spangled Banner."
"Whatever the Americans feel, we need to show that we're behind them," said Pat Butterfield, a retired real estate agent from London who lived in Florida for 12 years.
"This is something which America has not had experience of, and Britain has: wartime spirit," said Roger Alford, a senior research associate at the London School of Economics. "Suddenly, one's country and society mean more than they did earlier."
Multinational impact
The World Trade Center housed such companies as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Deutsche Bank AG. Siemens AG, which had 73 employees there, found all of them, though one is seriously injured. The company plans to set up a relief fund for employees.
Other companies had staffers in the towers, at the Pentagon, on board the aircraft, or in buildings adjacent to the World Trade Center. BAE Systems Plc Chief Executive John Weston said his company had "one or two people on the planes and one or two people in the Pentagon." He said BAE was offering help with such practical issues as pensions.
Many of Standard Chartered Plc's 450 staffers were "outside when the second aircraft hit," said Tim Halford, spokesman for the London-based company. "They saw a lot of horror."
To alleviate the shock, Standard Chartered is offering counseling via telephone or video teleconferencing, and has staffers ready to fly from London and replace the New York-based ones once air service to the United States is restored.
In Tokyo, some 40 bankers from Fuji Bank, Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank and Industrial Bank of Japan have been working around-the-clock in an office at Fuji headquarters to locate workers and respond to family inquiries. The WTC housed 32 Japanese companies, 19 of them financial ones.
"We're working without sleeping or resting," said Osamu Odawara, a spokesman at Mizuho Holdings Inc., which is combining the three banks into what will be the world's biggest lender.
Roche Holding AG, Europe's fifth-biggest drugmaker, sent two ambulances from New Jersey to help in rescue efforts, and dispatched a hazardous-materials team to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City and Newark's Penn Station to help decontaminate several thousand dust-covered survivors. Rival Aventis AG offered free vaccines.
Gestures of respect
When not contributing actively, companies and their staffers show sympathy or respect in other ways. RTL Group postponed the announcement of its first-half results. Staff at some Hong Kong banks plan to wear black clothing in a show of sympathy.
Allied Irish Banks Plc is lending personnel to the Irish consulate in New York to answer calls from Irish people concerned about relatives who may have been killed.
European soccer's ruling body UEFA postponed eight matches in the continent's top club competition, the Champions League, and 43 games in the second-tier UEFA Cup.
