Giuliani Takes on Wall Street

This is a partial transcript from "Your World with Neil Cavuto," December 1, 2004, that was edited for clarity.

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Former New York City Major Rudy Giuliani taking on his latest challenger, Wall Street. Giuliani Partners buying Ernst and Young's investment banking arm and creating Giuliani Capital Advisors.

Joining me now is Rudy Giuliani and Steve Oesterle. He is the CEO of Giuliani Capital Advisors.

Welcome to both of you.

RUDY GIULIANI, GIULIANI CAPITAL ADVISORS: Thank you very much.

CAVUTO: Does this mean you're not going to run for president?

GIULIANI: Well, it means I'm not going to run in the next couple of weeks or couple of months and over the next couple of years, this is, you know — I've been devoting myself to this business.

This is really an extension of what we've already been doing. We've been in business now for almost three years. We do a lot of security work, which people know well. You know, security consulting and analysis and crisis management.

But we've also done a lot of restructuring. And when we do it, we're limited by the fact that we're only 60, 65 people in Giuliani Partners, and we can't do the deals or the, you know, eventual sometimes solutions. So this gives us another 100 people or more, six different cities.

CAVUTO: You're an investment banker now.

GIULIANI: So now we have the capacity to — you know, looking back at some of the things we've done in the past, we probably could have offered more complete service and been able to do the whole thing ourselves or at least participated with others in doing a lot more.

CAVUTO: So a couple of years that you devote to this?

GIULIANI: I hope so.

CAVUTO: Yes?

GIULIANI: I hope to God.

CAVUTO: Well, you know, these days when you run for president — if you were so inclined — you had to begin, like, yesterday.

GIULIANI: Well, not yesterday. That's — these campaigns are so long, you're right. They're — it's very strange. But there's still plenty of time.

CAVUTO: All right. So there's time to get up to Iowa if you were inclined.

GIULIANI: Well, I've been to Iowa so often in the last couple months during the presidential campaign. It was one of the swing states, and I spent...

CAVUTO: Absolutely. You spent a lot of time there.

GIULIANI: A lot of time in Iowa.

CAVUTO: There are rumors, too, mayor, that you might take up the homeland security post now that Tom Ridge is stepping down or more likely, that your former police chief, Bernie Kerik, would.

GIULIANI: Well, I'm not, you know — I'm not able to move to government right now. I've known that for a time.

CAVUTO: So it's out of the question? If the president were to call you up and say, "Mayor, I want you to be homeland security?"

GIULIANI: You know, too many commitments to my partners and to the things that we're doing. And...

CAVUTO: So not government now.

GIULIANI: Even independent of this, we were very, very busy and we have a lot of clients. And you're very committed to what you're doing. So it's not something I can do right now.

CAVUTO: Steve, what about you? If he were to leave the firm, let's say to run for office, how would that affect the firm?

STEVEN OESTERLE, CEO, GIULIANI CAPITAL ADVISORS: Well, I think that the new transaction that we're doing to build this new business gives us some real sustainability on this. But the real point of this idea is to be able to provide the services to our clients that we have right now. Our clients...

CAVUTO: Something that Merrill Lynch isn't providing? Or Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley?

OESTERLE: Well, I'll tell you. We aren't going to try to compete against them all, because this is a boutique investment bank. And...

CAVUTO: But a little more than that.

OESTERLE: It will have capabilities on the restructuring side and also on the M&A side. Historically, has done mid-market M&A and some of the larger transactions, upper mid market M&A. But at this point in time, we think there's a real opportunity on the restructuring side, where you provide the full range of advisory services to these companies, as well as on the M&A side. So there's a strengthening in that market place, good transaction values.

CAVUTO: You worked very hard, Mayor, to get the president re-elected and you were very instrumental in some key states like Iowa. Do you think that now you have proven that you're a vote getter to Republicans who might have questioned whether you were a true Republican, the conservative base that's somewhat leery of you, might be more appealing?

GIULIANI: I don't know what you mean by that.

CAVUTO: The extreme right wing of the party.

GIULIANI: Right.

CAVUTO: How do you feel?

GIULIANI: I — I've been campaigning for Republicans for a long time. I mean, I — when I was mayor of New York in 1998, I traveled to a number of states, I think 30, campaigning for Republicans in 2000. In 2002, I think I was in 17 or 18 state in the last week on behalf of Senate and House candidates.

CAVUTO: So the extreme — reports that the extreme right-wing types who might want to prevent you from getting the nomination, is there much ado about that?

GIULIANI: I think we're — you know, we're a united party. We have — we have people that have different views. We have a very broad range of opinion, but about some core issues, we're very united.

We're united on the idea of fiscal discipline. We're united on the idea of lowering taxes. We're united on the idea of a strong national defense, strong homeland security. Those things are so strong.

Yes, we have some disagreements on social issues, but so do families. I mean families have those same disagreements. And I think that the party, you know, who knows what the major issues are going to be two or three years from now? It's too far away right now to know that.

CAVUTO: ... Mayor, I want to thank you. Steve, thank you very much.

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