Checking Giuliani's Ties

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Throw stocks into the mix and things can get downright weird.

Based on that underlying thesis, TheStreet.com will weigh in on the looming 2008 presidential campaign by evaluating the holdings and affiliations of the major presidential candidates, according to Stockpickr.com.

We begin with today's report on the portfolio of companies served by Giuliani Partners, the firm headed by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. (Via its communications director Sunny Mindel, Guiliani Partners declined to comment for this story.)

The Stockpickr list is designed to give an "overall picture of what types of clients Giuliani Partners has been interactive with over the years," not a list of its current client base, according to James Altucher, a contributor to TheStreet.com and the founder of Stockpickr. The Giuliani Partners portfolio on Stockpickr includes companies the firm has "some relationship" with, but does not necessarily say what the status of that relationship is, says Altucher.

For example, the site reports a relationship between Giuliani Partners and Applied DNA Sciences (APDN), a Stony Brook, N.Y.-based firm whose technologies are designed to prevent and identify counterfeits. But Giuliani Partners reportedly severed its ties to Applied DNA in 2005 after USA Today reported on the company's links with Richard Langley Jr., who was involved in an alleged scam involving penny stocks and was barred from participating in penny-stock offerings by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Giuliani Partners list does feature some common names you'd expect a prominent player like Giuliani to work with, including US Airways (LCC), Sprint Nextel (S) and Aon (AOC).

But Giuliani Partners' client base is chock-full of small- and micro-cap stocks like Applied DNA, one of many Giuliani Partners' clients that trade on the OTC Bulletin Board. Companies that trade on the so-called Pink Sheets are typically speculative in nature and often unable to meet listing requirements for the major exchanges.