Hi Paul. Fred Alger is alive and OK on Long Island. Don't know about David Alger
Spoke to Morgan Stanley rep in their hotline center during lunch hour, today. As of that time, they had confirmation that 1,700 of their 3,500 employees were alive & safe. Others continue to report in. So, hopefully that 1,700 is FAR from the final tally.
MS will be calling me back when they can confirm the status of Steven Roach and his staff. Rep I spoke with could not confirm whether, at the time of the attack, Steven was in the WTC tower or at the MS corporate HQ at 1585 Broadway (which, as I recall from my days roaming the area, is some distance uptown from the disaster area).
Cantor Fitzgerald is a much smaller brokerage firm, but may have suffered a very high mortality rate. They had 1,000 employees occupying 4 of the top 10 floors in WTC tower #1
Merrill Lynch evacuated their 9,000 HQ employees form building #4 near the foot of the towers shortly after the 1st plane impacted. Lehman Bros was in bldg #3, also near the towers. I've seen no specific release from them. Both these as well are other nearby buildings suffered various degrees of collateral damage and are also largely inaccessable due to debris from the 2 collapsed towers. Clearly these companies and other are scrambling to transfer the operations from these large office complexes to other corporate locations.
IMO it will be impossible to complete effective transfer of all those functions and personel this week or even next. And that will likely impact service, albeit temporarily, in unforeseeable ways once the markets reopen.
Paul, I forgot to check on Bill Mehan. If you have a minute, see what you can find out from the firm and let us know. TIA.
Wish I had better news to report. But bottom line is that our markets will be hurt for a long time by the loss of infrastructure and irreplacable human resources.
Isopatch |
