Howard Lutnick Keeps Contested $50M Bonus

Howard Lutnick still doesn’t know if he’ll be confirmed as Commerce Secretary, but he still has 50 million reasons to celebrate.

The Cantor Fitzgerald chief executive officer and Newmark Group chair will keep a $50 million bonus awarded to him after settling a lawsuit with Newmark investors, Bloomberg reported. The settlement was disclosed weeks ago, but the terms of the agreement were not reported.

Under the settlement, Lutnick will keep the bonus, which came out of the company’s public listing on the Nasdaq exchange towards the end of 2017, when it was spun off from Cantor’s BGC Partners. Newmark, meanwhile, will be paid back by insurance.

Newmark shareholders filed the lawsuit in Delaware court. Shareholders alleged that Lutnick didn’t earn his bonus because he didn’t increase Newmark’s value in the Nasdaq deal. The relevant lawsuits were designed for awarded funds to go back to the unit, instead of individual plaintiffs.

The defendants maintained they did nothing wrong, only settling to avoid expenses and litigation uncertainty. The settlement also resolves investor complaints that Lutnick and other Newmark officials were enriched unfairly in an exchange of partnership units in a 2021 deal.

Cantor declined to comment on the terms of the settlement.

With the chancery court lawsuits out of the way, Lutnick can focus on his confirmation fight to be the nation’s Commerce Secretary, which would put him in a high-level role regarding trade and tariffs at a time when that’s of increasing importance to the American public and world economy.

The 63-year-old billionaire agreed to step down from his leadership roles at Cantor and Newmark if he were to be confirmed for the Commerce Department. He also plans to divest his interests in Newmark and BGC Group.

The Senate Commerce Committee approved Lutnick’s nomination for Commerce Secretary last week. It’s not clear when the full Senate vote is expected to take place.

— Holden Walter-Warner