The Scoop
TSMC, the Taiwanese chips giant of key strategic importance to the US, has big business before the White House, from CHIPS Act funding to discussions of a potential tie-up with Intel. To navigate Washington, the $1 trillion company has sought advice from an unlikely place: middle market investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
Bankers at the firm run for decades by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — and, until this week, majority-owned by him, too — have been providing informal advice to government affairs executives at TSMC, according to people familiar with the matter. TSMC is not historically a client of Cantor Fitzgerald, whose bread-and-butter business is securities brokerage and smaller IPOs.
It’s typical for companies to seek insight from those connected to a new US administration, and the business and finance backgrounds of Trump officials provide multiple inroads that weren’t available in the Biden White House, which was largely devoid of private-sector resumes.
“While we do not comment on clients or potential clients, the statements regarding Cantor Fitzgerald are baseless and false,” a spokesperson for the firm said. A spokesperson for TSMC declined to comment.
TSMC’s senior leadership separately met with Lutnick in his Midtown offices earlier this year — a meeting requested by Lutnick as he prepared to become Commerce Secretary. He had by then stepped away from day-to-day management of Cantor, installing his two sons in nominal control of the firm. But he did not sell his controlling stake in the firm until this week, a level of private-sector entanglement unusual for Cabinet members.
“Secretary Lutnick has been focused on delivering President Trump’s directive to reshore manufacturing back to the United States,” a Commerce spokesperson said. “The administration’s close collaboration with industry leaders has already secured trillions in investment commitments to Make in America, including a $165 billion investment from TSMC.”
TSMC isn’t paying Cantor for its advice, one of the people said, but its in-house lobbyists have turned to its bankers to understand Lutnick’s thinking. And Cantor bankers have referenced a relationship with TSMC, whose customers include Apple and Nvidia, in new business pitches, according to one of the bank’s clients.
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Lutnick was Cantor’s CEO from 1991 until joining the Trump administration to run the Commerce Department, a consolation prize — he had wanted Treasury — but one that, thanks to his ubiquity around the president and the tariff agenda, has made him a powerful economic voice.