Wall Street grinds to a halt after terror attacks

12.15 pm

NEW YORK - Some of the biggest names among US and world financial institutions evacuated their downtown Manhattan offices on Tuesday (NY time) and the fate of many employees remained unknown after attacks destroyed the World Trade Center.

The twin towers of the complex, where roughly 40,000 people work, collapsed one at a time after two planes flew into them. Several top financial services firms have offices in the World Trade Center, including investment bank Morgan Stanley, which is the building's largest tenant with 25 floors. A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman based in midtown Manhattan declined to comment.

Thousands of workers trudged uptown through a cloud of smoke as buildings in the area were being evacuated. Witnesses described a scene that resembled something out of a movie.

"It was like being in the middle of a snowstorm," said one consultant who works in the area and was within view of the smouldering complex.

"Everything was covered in a half-centimetre of dust."

Although many top banks and brokerages have moved from lower Manhattan for headquarters further uptown, most of them still maintain operations in the Wall Street area, which is in the vicinity of the World Trade Center.

US securities markets including the nearby New York Stock Exchange decided to close, US Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt said.

Switzerland's Credit Suisse Group and Germany's Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank AG, Bank of America Corp., Cantor Fitzgerald, OppenheimerFunds and market data firm Thomson Financial, a unit of Thomson Corp., all have offices in the World Trade Center.

"We have two to three hundred people who work in that building and we have not been able to account for them due to communication failure," a senior Thomson executive in London told Reuters.

Cantor Fitzgerald occupied the top several floors in the World Trade Center, an employee who answered the phone at an office in Connecticut said before hanging up. A manager at the Connecticut office later said they haven't heard anything.

"Obviously we know they're in the World Trade Center," the manager said. "God willing, hopefully, they all got out. God willing some got out."

Telecommunications service providers have said their networks remain open but are clogged with calls.

A Credit Suisse First Boston spokeswoman said its some 800 employees in the World Trade Center evacuated the buildings.

The 600 employees of OppenheimerFunds who worked in one of the two towers are believed to be safe, said Jim Lacey, a spokesman for the company's parent, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., known as MassMutual.

"We've heard from a good portion of our people there, and believe they were evacuated," Lacey said. Most of the OppenheimerFunds employees worked between the 31st and 36th floors of Two World Trade Center, Lacey said.

Charles Schwab Corp., which is based in San Francisco, has a branch in the World Trade Center, but its employees seemed to get out of the building after the first plane crash, spokesman Glen Mathison said.

Schwab is telling its Bay Area workers to go home or not come to work as a precaution, he said.

"We are hopeful all of our employees in our Wall Street and Tower offices are fine," Mathison said. Not all of the workers have been accounted for, he said, because it has been hard to get through on the phone.

Bank of America said in a statement it is evacuating some of its buildings but did not give further details and could not be reached for comment.

Most of Deutsche Bank's World Trade Center staff left their office before the second blast, an analyst at the company told Reuters. The company has banned all business flights because of security reasons, the analyst and bankers in Europe said.

Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of Britain's Barclays Plc, has evacuated its downtown Manhattan offices located less than a mile from the World Trade Center, according to a company spokesman.

Employees at the World Financial Center, located just west of the World Trade Center and housing the offices of firms including Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. and American Express Co., did not answer phone calls to their offices.

- REUTERS

The New Zealand Herald has published a special print edition with coverage of the terrorist attacks. It is on sale in Auckland this afternoon.

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