New York
Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond-trading firm that lost 658 employees in the attack on the World Trade Center, said this week that the federal Victim Compensation Fund was shortchanging widows and children. Caps unfairly placed on payouts have cost Cantor families millions of dollars, said Stephen Merkel, Cantor’s general counsel. In most courts, Merkel said, the widow of a 30-year-old bond trader with a six-figure salary would be awarded $5 million to make up for a lifetime of lost income; under the fund’s cap, she’d get no more than $3 million. Merkel said the fund’s special master, Kenneth Feinberg, has his heart “in the right place,” but his “regulations are wrong on so many levels.” Feinberg said he would review the complaints “with great care.”
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