(Bloomberg) — A message to Elon Musk: a picture of giant scissors. Musk’s message: A picture of a sword.

The person at the other extreme: Howard Lutnick – Wall Street billionaire, MAGA believer, and chief stalker for the next American president, Donald Trump.

“Me, Elon Musk and Trump are going to figure this out,” Lutnick, president of brokerage firm and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald LP, told a podcaster shortly before Trump staged his comeback for the ages on Election Day.

By “that” Lutnick meant nothing less than the US’s $2 trillion deficit and the federal government’s role in American life. He and Musk say they are ready to gut federal agencies, dismantle entire departments and fill the vast bureaucracy with loyalists like themselves to rein in American capitalism.

It’s a remarkable turnaround for Lutnick, the pugnacious billionaire whose name is even now barely mentioned outside Wall Street circles. He is busy lining up candidates for powerful positions, along with other financial players vying for influence.

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One of the many suspects’ names appears on Lutnick’s list: his own. At Cantor Fitzgerald’s Park Avenue headquarters, employees are enthusiastic, but even top bankers and traders are in the dark about what’s in store for their CEO and what his rise to Trump World could mean for them.

Where Lutnick will land in Washington, anywhere, is anyone’s guess. But it has been publicly said that Lutnick is ready to serve if Trump asks. Treasury department is also a possibility, but others are vying for the job. Among them are Scott Bessent, a well-known hedge fund manager; Jay Clayton, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; and Robert Lighthizer, an economic advisor and China hawk during the first Trump administration. It’s hard to manage anyone at this point, inside or out.

But few on Wall Street have embraced Trump as enthusiastically as Lutnick. He traveled across the country in “Trump Force One”; The strategy was developed at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s South Florida residence and private club; he grabbed the microphone and shook his fist at raucous rallies; and I bragged about Trump’s grievance display at Madison Square Garden.

Few are now in a better position to reap the spoils.

“He was a political novice and became a major player through the strength of his personality,” said Charles Myers, a former Wall Street executive and Democratic donor who runs the consulting firm Signum Global Advisors.

Lutnick, a major Trump donor, has been working quickly to form the next administration for months. As co-chair of the transition team, he set up a war room at Mar-a-Lago with eight TV screens and two iPads. He personally walks Trump through the names, photos and biographies of potential candidates, laying out the pros and cons of each, according to a person familiar with the matter. Trump is expected to interview Treasury nominees next week.

Lutnick’s spokesman declined to comment.

“President-elect Trump will soon begin making decisions about who will serve in his second administration,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “These decisions will be announced when they are taken.”

Lutnick embraced Trump’s plan to restart oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and facilitate the extraction of valuable minerals and metals in the Lower 48. He and Musk also approved the creation of an entirely new federal department, the Department of Government Efficiency. Reducing what the new management sees as waste and inefficiency.

‘Two Sides’

“There are two sides,” Lutnick said in an Oct. 28 podcast with cryptocurrency investor Anthony Pompliano. “Cost reduction is DOGE,” he continued, referring to the proposed efficiency office. “And there’s the revenue generation that Howard and his economic team are providing.” In the podcast, he talked about his text exchange with Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla Inc.

Like Trump, Lutnick lamented the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing, criticized the “nonsense of coastal elites” about electric cars, and focused on the importance of reining in inflation. He also criticized the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline extension, a move made by President Joe Biden on his first day in office, and said China was attacking American workers by shipping fentanyl into the country.

“China is attacking America with instinct,” Lutnick told Pompliano. “He’ll shove it right into your stomach to try to kill you.”

Lutnick frequently placed himself at the center of such controversies, further fueling speculation within Cantor. Just 36 hours after Trump’s victory, employees wearing Cantor vests were buzzing through the deli on the lower floor of the firm’s Manhattan headquarters. Conversations were also going on upstairs on the business floor.

Lutnick is unusual among senior figures reported as potential cabinet picks in that he is a billionaire who still runs major private and public companies and also benefits from his involvement in government policies. Cantor’s ventures include an operation that would lend dollars to customers using Bitcoin as collateral; This is a business that could get a boost from Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrencies.

His group also includes publicly traded brokerage firm BGC Group Inc. and real estate company Newmark Group Inc., as well as a private investment bank and a fixed-income equity firm. Shares of both firms have risen since the close on Election Day — BGC up nearly 11% and Newmark up 5.5%.

Futures Debate

Most politically expedient is Lutnick’s latest venture, futures exchange FMX, which launched in September and has been involved in finger-pointing over plans to clear U.S. Treasury futures abroad; This is a debate that is likely to evaporate under the Trump administration.

Lutnick’s plans are particularly challenged by dominant Chicago-based rival CME Group Inc. Protests by Illinois Democrat Senator Dick Durbin writing to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the top derivatives regulator) and CME CEO Terry Duffy appealing to the Treasury Secretary. Janet Yellen.

Now Lutnick has a chance to take on Yellen’s role. At the very least, Lutnick’s current job means he helps appoint regulators who oversee FMX’s plans and the rest of his business empire. (Duffy himself said he wasn’t worried about Lutnick’s relationship with Trump, adding that such blatant clashes would be a “biblical disaster.”)

Any high-level government job should inevitably make questions about entanglements, forcing Lutnick — like anyone with such broad business interests who takes a job in a presidential administration — to divest assets or blindly place them in trust to avoid legal trouble. The guidance allows new authorities to minimize capital gains taxes, provided they invest the proceeds from any sales in a recognized investment fund, such as a broad-based mutual fund.

But the rules set by the Office of Government Ethics may be less enforceable under the Trump administration, according to Kate Belinski, a partner at the law firm Ballard Spahr LLP. “There’s really no way to get people to comply with that guidance,” he said by phone; He also added threats from the Justice Department, which is unlikely to attack officials in his own government under Trump.

Although still uncertain, the prospect of Lutnick’s departure has his 13,000 employees wondering who would lead them after 33 years at the helm if he moves on.

There is no easy answer, even for those who have worked at Cantor for a while. While he can be flamboyant in public and on television, he is known for being level-headed in business and keeping a tight circle of loyal, trusted advisors, according to people familiar with his working style.

Best MPs

Lutnick has repeatedly said he loves his current job but would take the job if Trump called him, leaving the exact fate of his companies, which stretch from Singapore to Tel Aviv and even the Philadelphia suburbs, uncertain. But while firms grew aggressively during his tenure, they remained largely self-sufficient and possibly self-managing organizations.

Real estate company Newmark is largely led by CEO Barry Gosin, who is popular with employees. Cantor and BGC (the firm that recently launched FMX) have clear knowledge of their divisions, but it’s unclear how they will be navigated without Lutnick’s day-to-day involvement.

At Cantor, Lutnick’s top aides have all been at their jobs for at least six years and are pushing their own business agendas. These include the former Jefferies Financial Group Inc., which has rapidly expanded the firm’s investment banking division. health banker Sage Kelly; Christian Wall, who joins from Credit Suisse and oversees fixed income; and former Barclays Plc trading executive Pascal Bandelier, who runs its equities business.

One key adviser likely to have a close role in any transition is Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s J. Aron & Co. Also present in the elevator is our long-time ally Stephen Merkel, who joined Cantor in 1993 after working as a lawyer in the department. In the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the first plane hit the World Trade Center. According to Lutnick’s college friend Tom Barbash’s book, On Top of the World, which chronicles Cantor’s loss of 658 employees in the wake of 9/11, Merkel missed being consumed by the flames by mere seconds.

–With help from Stephanie Lai.

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