Cantor Fitzgerald has a practice of awarding its FINRA registered employees compensation in the form of partnership units in an associated entity called Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P. (CFLP), which is not a member of FINRA. The employees are often employed by or registered with Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. (CF&Co.), the main Cantor FINRA-registered broker dealer. Many Cantor employees have employment agreements with CF&Co. which provide for payment in CFLP partnership units. The compensation in the form of CFLP partnership units can only be for the employees’ work as FINRA-registered representatives for CF&Co since the employees don’t work for CFLP.
As Bloomberg reported. Cantor recently announced layoffs. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-16/cantor-to-cut-hundreds-of-jobs-in-break-from-wall-street-pledge
Many employees who are laid off may own significant amounts of CFLP partnership units. If an employee believes he or she is not being compensated fairly with respect to the partnership units, what can an employee do? Our firm has handled this issue with Cantor before. The answer, if the employee is a FINRA registered representative, is he or she can bring a FINRA arbitration against CF&Co. to recover the value of the partnership units.