Should Wall Street Mourn Demise of Giuliani’s Bid?

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (left) pulled out of the presidential race last night amid a battery of brutal magazine profiles and rage-filled anti-endorsements.

We already know Giuliani wasn’t good for the squeegee-men, but was he good for Wall Street? Well, there’s been better.

We come to that conclusion after looking at that most important matrix, Wall Street bonuses. Bonuses during the Giuliani years of 1994 through 2001 totaled about $87.2 billion, according to the office of the New York State deputy comptroller (adjusted for inflation to roughly the midpoint of the Giuliani reign, that would be $112.08 billion), or an average of $10.9 billion a year. That would buy you only 160 Lloyd Blankfeins a year, hardly enough to run an entire securities industry.

You know who is better for Wall Street? The current Mayor–and potential presidential candidate–Michael Bloomberg (right). Under Bloomberg’s reign, Wall Street bonuses have totaled $137 billion and averaged $22.8 billion a year. In fact, under Bloomberg, bonuses on the Street set records in 2005 and again in 2006, when there was $33.9 billion paid out.

Of course, Bloomberg had to deal with the fallout from 9/11, which froze much of downtown Manhattan and tempted such firms as Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs Group to consider fleeing the city. (Thanks to Bloombergian influence, Goldman now is building a headquarters just across the street from the former World Trade Center and Merrill Lynch, while potentially moving to midtown, will stay in the city).

Because Bloomberg has kept everyone in a will-he-or-won’t-he guessing frenzy, it is unclear whether he would be Wall Street’s favorite candidate–using another money matrix, fund-raising–should he run. Private-equity firms, for one, have favored Mitt Romney
according to Thomson Financial and PEhub.com. And regardless, the billionaire mayor could afford to finance any run singlehandedly.

As to John McCain, who won Giuliani’s endorsement, he probably hasn’t wowed them on Wall Street either: “I think there are some greedy people on Wall Street that perhaps need to be punished,” he said in his most recent debate with Romney.