Edition: U.S. / Global

Sean Peter McNulty: Planning Family Business

Published: January 29, 2002

The mother wept when she learned she given birth to a boy.

It was 1971, and the nun at the Roman Catholic hospital assured her there would be no more Vietnams by the time her son grew up. The mother, Rosanne McNulty, took comfort in those words for years to come.

"But war came and got him anyway," Mrs. McNulty said. Her son, Sean Peter McNulty, 30, was a trader on the international desk at Cantor Fitzgerald.

He was the first boy of five children in a close-knit Irish Catholic family — so close that Mr. McNulty was unable to stay at State University at Albany for longer than a month because he missed his family.

He was also eager to start a career on Wall Street, where he began as a gofer at Prudential Securities. He eventually worked his way up to the trading desk, and later moved to Société Générale Crosby Securities. He turned down a job offer from another company to work in Hong Kong because it was too far from home.

He lived just blocks away from his childhood apartment at 68th Street and York Avenue. He recently told his family that he was looking forward to quitting Wall Street and joining his mother and father, Gerald McNulty, in Venice, Fla., where they retired in 1996. He and his brother, Richard, had talked about opening a family business in Venice.