Giuliani also capitalized on his fame by heading Giuliani Partners, a management consulting group he founded with former aides. Based in New York, the boutique firm reportedly has earned more than $100 million with contracts to help clients improve corporate governance, financial planning and crisis management.
But progress came in fits and starts.
Giuliani and his team bought and later sold an investment banking unit that saw a sharp drop in revenue the first year. Another subsidiary, set up to focus on safety and security, lost clients after the director, Bernard B. Kerik, was forced in 2004 to withdraw from consideration as secretary of Homeland Security. Kerik, who served as police commissioner under Giuliani, is awaiting trial on federal charges of fraud and tax evasion.
The Giuliani group's first client, Purdue Pharma, showed the limits of his celebrity.
Purdue Pharma produced OxyContin, the nation's No. 1 prescription painkiller. Abuse of the narcotic analgesic, known on the street as hillbilly heroin, had exploded to nightmare levels. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration director declared that OxyContin had caused or contributed to 465 deaths in two years.
In May 2002, Michael Friedman, Purdue Pharma's chief operating officer, called Giuliani "uniquely qualified" to save his company's battered reputation.
"The management experience, law enforcement background, leadership and integrity of Giuliani Partners and its CEO Rudolph W. Giuliani are tremendous assets to our company," Friedman said in a press release still posted on the Giuliani Partners website.
Over the next two years, Giuliani appealed to members of Congress, federal and state prosecutors, and the head of the DEA to keep OxyContin on the market while seeking ways to curb prescription abuse. After the DEA documented theft at Purdue Pharma's manufacturing plants, Giuliani Partners sought to improve security and record-keeping.
"We believe that government officials are more comfortable knowing that Giuliani is advising Purdue Pharma," Howard Udell, the company's chief lawyer, said in a statement issued by Giuliani Partners.
But John L. Brownlee, the U.S. attorney in western Virginia, made plans in 2006 to indict Purdue Pharma and three of its top executives -- including Friedman and Udell -- for misleading the public about OxyContin's dangers. Giuliani met or spoke by phone with Brownlee six times to argue for his client, according to the prosecutor's office.
