NEW YORK - Cantor Fitzgerald LLP, the bond trading firm that lost more than two-thirds of its employees in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, has announced a plan to provide financial support to the families of the victims.

The firm will cover their health care costs for the next 10 years and give them a portion of its profits for five years or until each receives at least $100,000 in cash, chief executive officer Howard Lutnick said Wednesday.

"We want to be able to care for these families over the long term," he told the victims' families at a meeting in New Jersey.

Cantor Fitzgerald also will distribute the missing employees' commissions and bonuses to their families earlier than planned. The company had said they would receive the payments by Jan. 1.

Cantor Fitzgerald lost about 700 of the 1,000 employees who worked at its headquarters on Sept. 11.