Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani will be meeting with a select group of up to 40 top insurance executives in Bermuda next week.

The private dinner, at an undisclosed location, is strictly invitation only and has been organised in tandem with the World Insurance Forum (WIF) taking place at the Fairmont Southampton Hotel next week.

Mr. Giuliani is to fly into the Island next week to give the lunchtime address at the forum on Wednesday ? and the avid golfer is expected to also take to the links with plans to play on some of the Island?s leading golf courses.

The closed dinner meeting between the insurance industry elite and Mr. Giuliani ? who was mayor during the devastating terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001 ? was said by a WIF organiser to be the first major meeting between the former mayor and the sector since 9/11.

Although Mr. Giuliani is a lawyer, and not directly involved in the insurance sector, he and the industry should have much to talk about with insurers playing a key role in helping New York get back on its feet after the attacks.

The sector ? including a number of leading Bermuda-based companies ? were praised then for their quick payment of claims after the tragedy.

The attacks also escalated a void in re/insurance capacity that led to a wave of new reinsurers setting up in Bermuda in the months following 9/11 to provide much needed coverage.

Mr. Giuliani?s speech on Wednesday is to be his ?Leadership Speech? that he gives through the company he set up in 2002, Giuliani Partners Llc. But WIF operating committee chairman Robin Spencer-Arscott and project co-ordinator Suzie Pewter said Mr. Giuliani also speak specifically to the insurance industry with some questions already from the sector already due to be answered, and a chance for participants to ask additional questions after Mr. Giuliani?s talk.

Mr. Giuliani, 60, a born and bred New Yorker, grew up in a working class family in Brooklyn.

He was educated at Manhattan College in the Bronx and the New York University Law School in Manhattan, graduating magna cum laude in 1968. He dedicated the majority of the first 25 years of a public service career in New York and Washington D.C. In 1993, he was elected the 107th mayor of the city of New York and in 1997, was re-elected by a wide majority. Mr. Giuliani may be remembered for his active involvement in the hours and weeks after the September 11 attacks ? an attack that killed and wounded thousands ? but is also credited for the downturn in crime in New York during his tenure as mayor. Crime statistics show that under his watch, overall crime in New York City ? once known as a crime capital ? fell 65 percent, murder rates declined 70 percent and New York even earned the recognition of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for being the ?safest large city in the United States?. For his efforts after September 11, Mr. Giuliani was named ?Person of the Year? by Time Magazine, knighted by the Queen and awarded the Ronald Reagan Presidential Freedom Award.