Political and Business Winners Amid the Crypto Craze: Unveiling the $2.5 Billion Annual Income of the Trump Commerce Secretary's Family

Original author: Todd Gillespie

Original translation by Luffy, Foresight News

Cantor Fitzgerald LP may have a special item on his year-end expense list this year.

"I just left the office and joked with someone that I'd be happy to buy him a folding bed because he's coming to work on Sunday and won't leave until Friday," said Sage Kelly, 53, co-CEO of Cantor Investment Bank, in an interview at his New York office.

This New York-based private boutique financial institution is experiencing its busiest and most successful year ever, steadily climbing the Wall Street rankings, capitalizing on the cryptocurrency boom, and reviving its special purpose acquisition company (SPAC)-driven transaction business.

Currently, Cantor is controlled by brothers Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, whose father, Howard Lutnick, joined Donald Trump's administration earlier this year as Secretary of Commerce. According to sources familiar with the matter, the company's revenue is expected to exceed $2.5 billion in 2025, a record high and more than a quarter higher than last year.

From left to right: Pascal Bandelier, Christian Wall, Kyle Lutnick, Brandon Lutnick, Sage Kelly, photographed at the company's New York office.

“An industry giant like Howard, a man of unwavering resolve, who has worked here for 40 years and led the company for 30, will inevitably leave a huge void,” Kelly said. He served as co-CEO with Pascal Bandelier and Christian Wall, overseeing the company's operations. “But the entire company stepped up and succeeded—thanks to Brandon and Kyle.”

Executives expressed their skepticism regarding the claim that "new relationships in Washington contributed to the company's success." They argued that Cantor's success was not accidental, but rather a result of a lean team and years of proactive preparation in areas that established banks avoided.

According to sources familiar with the matter, the company's 250 dealmakers are expected to generate over $1 billion in revenue. Based on data from Coalition Greenwich, each banker contributes approximately $4 million in revenue, roughly twice the efficiency of large Wall Street firms.

A spokesperson for Cantor declined to comment on the company's financial results.

This year, Cantor underwrote the most US IPOs in the industry and ranked fifth in all US stock offerings, surpassing established institutions such as Barclays and Citigroup. The company's trading business is thriving, with clients primarily outside the US. Furthermore, Cantor was expected to acquire hedge fund O'Connor from UBS before the end of the year. However, this deal was stalled at the last minute due to losses incurred by the division related to the bankrupt auto parts supplier First Brands Group.

Cantor has also hired bankers and plans to expand into the German market and participate in the wave of mergers and acquisitions of regional banks in the United States (there are approximately 4,000 regional banks in the US). Another target market is the Middle East: Cantor has already established a banking team in Dubai and is preparing to enter Abu Dhabi, planning to introduce stock sales and trading, and investment banking services to the region.

Cantor derives much of its revenue from the surge in cryptocurrency-related transactions , including providing financing services to multi-billion dollar crypto treasury companies. In addition, the company’s early investments in now-thriving sectors such as rare earth minerals, quantum computing, robotics, and data centers have also yielded substantial returns.

Howard Lutnick joined President Donald Trump's administration earlier this year as Secretary of Commerce.

"The five core global themes happen to correspond to our five largest investments over the past three or four years," said Bandelier, 46, who also heads the equity division, which is projected to double its 2008 revenue (the previous best year) by 2025.

The series of successes, culminating in the Lutnick brothers and their younger siblings taking over a majority stake in the company, has garnered significant attention from Wall Street and Washington. Executives have dismissed allegations of conflicts of interest, stating that they now operate independently of Howard and that they had already strategically positioned themselves for these inevitably booming businesses, making current profitability a natural consequence.

"I assure you, we haven't gotten anything for nothing," Kelly said. "It's easy for our competitors to say that because they haven't been involved in our work every day and don't understand how hard it is."

On Tuesday, at the luxurious Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Miami Beach, Brandon Lutnick described the busy period his family had just experienced during a meeting.

“My brother Kyle and I have always hoped to be in this position, but it has come much sooner than we expected,” said Brandon, 27, who serves as chairman and CEO of the parent company, while his 29-year-old brother Kyle serves as executive vice chairman. “This has been a fantastic year for our company.”

The previous evening, Brandon hosted a dinner party where he sat next to Bo Hines, the former cryptocurrency advisor to the president, and the Winklevoss brothers, founders of a cryptocurrency exchange. Kevin O'Leary, a crypto asset advocate and television personality known for his show "The Winners," was also seated beside him.

Cantor is also partnering with long-time client Tether on plans to launch a stablecoin in the US; and is acting as its financial advisor (Cantor is also an investor in Tether), assisting with its fundraising. This funding round could value Tether at up to $500 billion, generating billions of dollars in profits for Cantor. Furthermore, Cantor also benefits from the Genius Act passed by the Trump administration in July, which establishes a regulatory framework for stablecoins in the US.

"We were already involved in the cryptocurrency field long before Howard joined the government," Kelly said. "We had already established a presence in the technology and industrial sectors, and we were also already involved in the power and renewable energy industries before Howard took office."

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and Cantor Chairman Brandon Lutnick at the 2025 Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas.

Not everyone believes in Cantor's independence. In August, Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren requested more information after reports surfaced that Cantor was considering brokering a deal that would allow hedge funds to profit if U.S. tariffs were lifted. Sources familiar with the matter revealed that while other banks had also been involved in similar deals, Cantor not only abandoned the deal but also refused to advise Trump Media Technology Group's Bitcoin asset treasury to avoid potential conflict-of-interest allegations.

"When the son of the Commerce Secretary takes the helm of a Wall Street firm that his father once led, it's inevitable that people will question whether everything is compliant," Wyden wrote in an email to Bloomberg in August.

But in a time when politics and business are intertwined in unprecedented ways, Cantor has not shied away from engaging with government officials. At a meeting in Miami, the company hosted Eric Trump, son of the president, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz—who chairs the committee reviewing the Commerce Department under Howard Lutnick. That evening, Brandon Lutnick rushed to Washington for a dinner at the White House, dining with Wall Street tycoons and his father.

Cryptocurrencies have been met with skepticism for years, but early investors believed that wealth was only a matter of time.

“No winter is without spring,” said Wall, 50, who heads the firm’s fixed income business, which launched a multi-billion dollar lending service backed by Bitcoin and completed its first transaction in May. Wall stated that the Trump administration’s support for innovation, clearer regulations, and the resulting institutional adoption are “creating a whole new world.”

Bandelier said the company's success was also due to the downturn in mid-sized U.S. banks. "This has been the easiest period of my career in hiring," he said.

In a sense, Cantor and the cryptocurrency industry have changed, with this year’s Miami conference (the third in four years) being open to the media for the first time.

Another notable event was that Paolo Ardoino, the keynote speaker and CEO of Tether, spoke before two of the most influential financial regulators in the United States—Paul Atkins, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Caroline Pham, Acting Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

During a break in the meeting, the three posed for a photo with Brandon Lutnick and Cantor's General Counsel Stephen Merkel, all smiles.