Posted on: Sunday, March 10, 2002

Ex-WTC firms get back to business

By Adam Geller
Associated Press

NEW YORK — Tacked to the wall, just over Charlie Lechner's shoulder, is a small photo of a man the gravelly Lechner gently recalls as "really, really special." It is the closest Lechner will get to bringing back Mario Nardone, the best friend who worked beside him on the agency bonds desk until the morning of Sept. 11.

In front of the desk, Lechner now looks out over a buzzing new trading floor spread across a space the size of a football field where brokers are barking orders and one of every seven is a new hire.

This is the place Lechner and his co-workers at Euro Brokers Inc. have arrived at, six months after they fled Tower 2 of the World Trade Center — holding tight to memories, simultaneously focused on moving their company forward.

"We want it," Lechner says, explaining his company's resolve to resurrect itself. "This is what we do — we're brokers. And as long as there's business out there we're going to go out and get it."

Thousands of other Wall Street workers know firsthand the task set before Lechner and his colleagues. They work for scores of companies displaced from the World Trade Center, including a relatively small number of firms whose ranks accounted for most of those who died in the terrorist attacks.

Tomorrow will mark a half-year since Sept. 11 and, for the companies that were very nearly wiped out, the months have yielded feats of recovery that would have sounded like business fairy tales in the days after the disaster.

In the past few weeks, Cantor Fitzgerald, with 658 employees killed in the attack, announced that its eSpeed subsidiary earned its first quarterly profit ever. In late January, Sandler O'Neill and Partners — back in business despite losing 66 of its 148 Trade Center workers — reopened its equity desk and was flooded with orders.

The parent company of Euro Brokers, which lost 61 from a roster of 309, recently announced that its business in November — the most recent month for which it has reported results — had already rebounded to nearly 90 percent of the monthly volume before the attack.

"I can tell you, I'm looking forward to the day when I can put out a press release that says: 'I'm done,' " said Michael Corasaniti, who has interviewed more than 500 job applicants since he was hired in October to rebuild a decimated research department at Keefe Bruyette & Woods.

Corasaniti and other executives, quick to emphasize their companies' successes, do not pretend that things have returned to the way they used to be. Even six months of miracles can't do that.

"If I were to say 9-11 didn't affect me, I'd be a liar," said Gil Scharf, chairman and chief executive of Euro Brokers.

Getting back to business has required people to do things well beyond the scope of a mere job. But the accomplishments so far do not mean the rebuilding is done. Neither does the passing of an arbitrary anniversary date.

But Euro Brokers' employees have grasped hold of the date to reinforce their commitment to the families of lost colleagues.

Tomorrow, the firm will donate all brokerage revenues to its relief fund.

"We've got a lot of angels looking out for us," Keslo says. "And we're going to take them along for the ride."