NEW YORK (AP) - The phones
wailed for attention just the way they used to. The traders, hanging
over their computer screens, hollered above the din, the same as
before.
And the buy and sell orders cascaded in, as if
customers were trying in just the first hour after the opening bell
to make up for all the days lost since Sept. 11.
But if Tuesday's chaos was reassuring to workers at Sandler
O'Neill & Partners, it wasn't business as usual.
There was no Gus Economos there to give orders. No Kathy Hunt
Casey to offer home decorating tips. No Tom Glasser to tell jokes.
No Stacey McGowan to call you "friend."
"The first time I had to tell someone they had a phone call, I
stood up and looked around the room and it was a shock," said
Jennifer Imbrogno, one of just four people, out of an equity desk of
24, who survived the attack on the World Trade Center.
Sandler returned to stock trading Tuesday for the first time
since it lost 66 of the 148 employees - including leader Herman
Sandler - who once worked on the 104th floor of the trade center.
In the weeks after the attack, the fragments of the business had
been scattered among three offices. Some of the quarters were so
cramped that employees joked about being assigned to the "trading
closet."
While those makeshift offices allowed Sandler to resume some of
its operations, including consulting on mergers and managing debt
offerings, stock trading had to wait for a floor.
On Tuesday, all of Sandler's operations were finally consolidated
in new quarters in a nondescript midtown Manhattan office building
with a view of rooftop heating ducts.
"To us, there was never an option," said Fred Price, chief
operating officer. "Because not to press ahead would've been to give
up."
At 9:30 a.m., executive Terry Maltese pronounced the market open.
There was brief applause from traders, but the clapping ended almost
immediately when telephones started ringing. Soon, conversation was
replaced by shouts to buy and sell, the sounds of markets being
made.
Before Sept. 11, Sandler specialized in trading the stocks of
small banks and financial firms. On Tuesday, clients eager to give
the firm business called in orders to buy and sell stocks for big
companies like General Electric and Lucent, whose ticker symbols do
not normally circulate at Sandler. That made the pace even more
frenetic.
"As soon as you see somebody throw a phone, you know we're
alive," said Robert Castrignano, a former Goldman Sachs executive
who took early retirement last June, then put aside golf for a job
heading Sandler's equity desk. "As soon as you hear a curse word,
you know we're back in the saddle."
The Sandler employees - more than 40 of them new hires - may have
had little time to stop and think about what had happened four
months ago.
For some, like trader Suzanne Ircha, that was the best way they
knew to move forward.
"Herman would be like, 'Sit down, shut up and make some money.
You've got to do what you've got to do,"' Ircha said, trying to wipe
away tears without smearing her mascara.
Ircha is alive because she was out at breakfast with a client the
morning of Sept. 11. She remembers watching the World Trade Center
burn from the back seat of a taxi she hailed to get back to the
office.
Imbrogno survived because her boss, Economos, told her on Sept.
10 that she should not worry about coming into the office so early
every day. So mistakenly reset her alarm clock for 6 p.m. instead of
6 a.m. Running late, she got off her bus just after the first plane
hit.
On keyboards and on the corners of desks, Ircha and some of her
colleagues had placed ornaments to lost friends, along with words of
consolation and encouragement from well-wishers.
"Good Luck - You Guys Are Gonna Do Great Things!" read a note on
trader Jennifer Blase's keyboard.
A crystal sculpture commissioned by Sandler will be installed in
the lobby, on a base inscribed with 70 names - the 66 employees, two
consultants and two visitors to the firm who were killed.
"It will be to remind everybody that there's a piece of us that's
gone," Price said, "but that will never be forgotten."
AP-ES-01-22-02 1746EST
.gif){kind=small}
