WTC Tenants Search for Their Workers
Companies Try to Account for Employees After Terrorist Attack

See the tenant list of North Tower and South Tower of the World Trade Center Complex.

Read about the history of the World Trade Center.

Rescue workers remove a man from one of the World Trade Center towers early Tuesday. Photo: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Sept. 12, 2001 -- Tens of thousands of workers from more than 400 businesses were believed to be at the World Trade Center at the time of Tuesday's terrorist attack.

The World Trade Center towers were considered some of the most prestigious office space in the country. They were home to many prominent firms in the financial, insurance and technology sectors. Tenants included leading financial services companies like the Bank of America, Kemper Insurance, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Credit Suisse First Boston.

The buildings also had offices for dozens of foreign companies, including Japan's Nikko Securities, CommerzBank AG and Deutsche Bank of Germany, Cantor Fitzgerald of London and Sinochem American Holdings of China.

Some firms had thousands of employees at the World Trade Center. The spokesperson from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the largest tenant at the complex, confirmed Wednesday that it occupied 22 floors at 2 WTC and 3 floors at 5 WTC and that it had approximately 3,500 people working for Morgan's individual-investor businesses in the Trade Center.

Cantor Fitzgerald of London and eSpeed International, an electronic trading service spun off by Cantor Fitzgerald, reportedly had hundreds of employees at the twin towers. Deutsche Bank said it had more than 300 employees working there. For many businesses, it may take days, if not weeks, to fully account for their employees.

Typically, as many as 45,000 people worked in the twin towers, according to CoStar Group, provider of real estate industry data. But analysts say many workers were not yet in their offices when the first attack took place at 8:48 a.m. ET. Some estimate that 10,000 to 20,000 people were inside the buildings when the first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, crashed into the North Tower.