Survivors bind together in manner never seen before

On July 11th, Irish America magazine held its annual Wall Street 50 dinner to honour prominent Irish-American members of New York's financial community. The location was the Windows on the World restaurant on the 110th floor of the World Trade Centre south tower. It was a spectacularly beautiful evening and, before the ceremony, guests gathered in knots by the windows to marvel at the views of Manhattan.

The firm of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, which occupied the 88th and 89th floors of the north tower was particularly well represented, with three of its top executives stepping forward to receive their Waterford Crystal harps from then-Irish consul general, Barrie Robinson. They were chairman and co-chief executive Joseph Berry, a fourth generation Irish American and a member of the Ireland-US Council for Commerce and Industry; president and co-chief executive John Duffy, a first generation Irish American whose mother was from Newtongore, Co Leitrim and father from Culleens, Co Sligo; and executive vice-president, Joseph Lenihan, who traced his roots to Clare and Wexford.

The Keefe Bruyette executives were in good humour. They had successfully steered the brokerage firm through an insider-trading scandal which forced the resignation of former chief executive James McDermott last year. All made little speeches of thanks.

When American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower at 8.48 a.m. on September 11th, the Keefe, Bruyette & Woods offices took a direct hit.

Sixty-seven of the firm's 171 employees who worked in the trade centre are today missing. Joseph Berry, Joseph Linehan and Christopher Duffy, the 23-year-old son of John Duffy are missing. Four of its eight board members and its best analysts are missing.

Keefe, Bruyette & Woods is now trying to rebuild. It has installed computer servers in the lower Manhattan apartment of one of its engineers and has got its systems up and running again. As Mr Duffy copes with his grief, two executives, Andy Senchak and Thomas Michaud, are making sure the firm survives, and they say it has enough capital and business momentum to keep going.

They are getting by with a little help from friends - and former rivals. Like many other financial companies devastated by the attacks, the company is finding that other financial institutions are prepared to help them get back on their feet. Merrill Lynch added Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, and Sandler, O'Neill and Partners (a 104th floor company that lost 67 employees), to a syndicate for a follow-on stock offering, which will generate fees of some $200,000 (€216,826) for each firm.

The attacks also brought together some bitter Wall Street rivals. Philip Purcell, chief executive of Morgan Stanley, and also a former Wall Street Irish honour recipient, was reconciled with adversary John Mack, who left the firm after a very public and nasty power struggle with Mr Purcell last year and is now chief executive of Credit Suisse First Boston. They shook hands after Mr Mack sent an e-mail sympathising with Mr Purcell, and then worked together with other power brokers to help get the financial world back into action.

The practical help has mainly come in the form of space and equipment.

Citygroup offered seven floors to rival Lehman Brothers which lost its premises in the World Trade Centre. UBS Warburg gave office space and computers to Cantor Fitzgerald, eSpeed & TradeSpark, the hardest-hit company which lost 730 of its 1,000 staff in top floor offices. Bank of America Securities donated space for Sandler O'Neill & Partners's fixed income trading floor.

But while firms regroup, another problem has become evident to everyone on Wall Street, that of traumatised employees struggling to deal with their confused emotions. After two weeks, no-one has got over the event. Many workers who fled from the horror of September 11th or who lost friends and colleagues, are consumed with grief, cannot sleep, and experience constant distress and depression.

Their nerves are on edge. Some feel acute guilt for not saving friends, even for surviving when so many died.

Companies all across the financial district have therefore been organising "critical incident stress debriefing", or crisis counselling. Sandler O'Neill has grief counselors on call, with telephone numbers posted on its website.

Cantor Fitzgerald has formed a support group for friends and families led by a "mental health professional."

In a message to employees of Morgan Stanley, which lost 40 people, Mr Purcell said: "It is not a financial tragedy but a human one."

Keefe, Bruyette & Woods has engaged counselling firm Harris Rothenberg to advise and comfort employees, families and friends and has arranged for the individual families of missing employees to participate in a programme whereby they are informally adopted by investment bankers, who help them with organising their financial affairs and coping with legal problems.

Sharing a nightmare also has a positive spinoff. Howard W. Lutnick, chairman and chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, who lost a brother in the attack, has been unable to contain his grief in television interviews but has emphasised the bond uniting survivors as a key to rebuilding his shattered company to provide financial security for the families of those killed.

"All of our survivors are now bound together in a manner never seen before in business," said Mr Lutnick in a message to his staff. "We are a large family that has lost its brothers and sisters. There is no adversity our survivors cannot overcome. Our survivors reopened this company 47 hours after the attack. I cannot be more proud to be associated with this group of people. Godspeed to eSpeed - I love you."