Howard Lutnick, President-elect Trump's commerce secretary appointee, is a billionaire businessman who is the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street financial services firm.

If confirmed by the Senate, Lutnick will head the Department of Commerce, which oversees U.S. job growth and economic development. Lutnick has been co-chairing Trump's White House transition team, along with Linda McMahon, former co-founder and CEO of WWE.

Lutnick has an estimated net worth of $2 billion, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Here's how Lutnick made his billions.

Cantor Fitzgerald

The majority of Lutnick's wealth comes from his stake in Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services firm. Lutnick joined the company in 1983 and became its president and CEO in 1991. He was named chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald in 1996. Lutnick is estimated to have a 60% stake in Cantor Fitzgerald, according to a 2018 article from Bloomberg.

More than 650 Cantor Fitzgerald employees died during the September 11 terrorist attacks when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center just a few floors below the firm's offices. Lutnick's younger brother, Gary Lutnick, was among the employees who lost their lives that day.

Lutnick rebuilt the firm in the wake of the attacks and launched The Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, which donated $180 million over five years and provided health care coverage for more than 10 years to the families of Cantor employees who died.

Cantor also has a stake in publicly traded financial services company BGC Group, which was originally part of Cantor Fitzgerald before becoming its own entity in 2004. Lutnick led the merger between BGC and electronic trading platform eSpeed, which formed BGC Partners, Inc. BGC later acquired the commercial real estate services business Newmark, which went public in 2017.