Cantor Fitzgerald is a bond trading company.  Read about its activities since 9/11 and match these sentence halves.

The rebirth of Cantor Fitzgerald

The firm that lost most employees in the terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001 is alive and kicking.  658 of its workers died in the attack on the north tower of the World Trade Center, nearly a third of Cantor Fitzgerald’s worldwide staff, but the company has survived and is once again making a profit.

The new Cantor Fitzgerald, however, barely resembles the company it was before the tragedy.  Once the dominant player in the government bond market, it is now diversifying into asset management and investment banking.  Change, however, had already begun before the attack in 2001.  Cantor had started moving toward using technology to trade bonds with the launch of  eSpeed, its electronic bond-trading spin-off.  At first profitable, eSpeed has since had its ups and downs because of intense competition, but is looking to move into other areas such as foreign exchange and mortgage-backed securities.

Cantor itself faced a different challenge; how to build back an established firm after such a loss of personnel.  It took three difficult years to rebuild its foundation, and only then could the company turn its attention to growth.  But grow it has, and is on track to achieve gains in profits of over 20% this year.  Much of this remarkable achievement is down to Howard Lutnick, Cantor’s chief executive.

Lutnick, who lost a brother in the attack and only survived himself because he was late for work after taking his son to nursery, is the driving force behind Cantor’s rebirth.  Facing heavy criticism after taking those who were killed off the Cantor payroll only days after the tragedy, he pledged to help the victims’ families by paying them 25% of Cantor’s profits for the next five years, and providing health insurance for a decade.  Determined to make good his promises, Lutnick drove the firm back into profitability in a remarkably short time.

Lutnick’s latest challenge is to guide the company through the process of diversification into what are already crowded fields, such as stock trading, trading of corporate bonds and futures, and investment banking.  The firm is building from scratch a bond trading division catering to investment firms, and is planning to offer hedge funds to its clients.  At a difficult time for Wall Street, how successful these new ventures will be remains to be seen.

Match these common expressions from the report with their meanings.

Now use the words and expressions to complete these sentences.