The first thing to be said about Michael Bloomberg, New York's mayor-elect, is that he has a tough act to follow. The second is that he has an extraordinarily tough task ahead of him, as he will be required to nurse the city through a fiscal crisis at least as severe as that of 1975 when the city almost went broke.
The fact that he is a successful businessman and that he got the backing not just of the popular outgoing mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, but also of the former Democratic Governor, Hugh Carey, - who is credited with saving New York from bankruptcy in the 1970s - helped enormously to get him elected by the most slender of margins. Of course his personal fortune helped too, but New Yorkers did not make much of an issue of that.
Mr Bloomberg is head of Bloomberg News, a global media powerhouse, with 7,000 employees, 79 bureaux, a seven-language satellite television network, a syndicated radio station and four magazines. As two-thirds owner, the city's 108th mayor is worth more than $3 billion.
He spent over $50 million of his personal fortune on his campaign, much of which went to swamp New York TV stations with advertisements portraying himself as a leader who understands business. This went down well with voters who described the economy and jobs as the top issues facing New York.
The September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre dealt a cruel blow to New York which was already suffering from an economic downturn. City Comptroller Alan Hevesi warned during the campaign that the Big Apple lost $45 billion in infrastructure, buildings, equipment and human lives, and that 115,000 people would lose their jobs inside a year. This includes 15,000 of the 180,000 people employed in the securities industry, which provides the city with 19 per cent of its salary base. The city is $33 million in debt due to earlier borrowing, and is now staring at a projected budget deficit of $4 billion.
Mayor Giuliani has already frozen hiring and ordered a 15 per cent cut in spending by city agencies in such areas as garbage removal and help for the homeless. Many New Yorkers fear a return to dirtier streets, greater crime, disintegrating schools and a drift of people to the suburbs in New Jersey and Connecticut.
But the picture is different from 1975 when President Ford refused a federal bailout to New York, prompting the famous Daily News headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead". This time is different. The message from President Bush in the days after the attack was: "Anything it takes to help New York," and federal aid and insurance will help ease the pain.
"It's more of a business problem than a political problem this time," said the head of a Wall Street asset-management company. "The most important task facing the mayor is rebuilding and we needed a top notch businessman who can manage large projects. He'll be better equipped than a politician who has to please different factions."
A leading Democratic lawyer agreed, saying, "The general assumption is that the city is facing a financial crisis as severe as 1975. People on the world of business and finance, including Democrats, supported Bloomberg because he understands the gravity of the situation."
The prospect of the departure of Mayor Giuliani, who guided the city brilliantly through its nightmare, made leadership rather than party affiliation the number one issue in the election, and Giuliani blessed Bloomberg for that role," said a law professor, explaining the victory in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by five to one.
There is also a widespread assumption that the new mayor has a strong team around him, according to the Republican head of a securities firm who supported his campaign. Mr Bloomberg, who switched from Democrat to Republican just to run for mayor, hit on a winning formula by portraying himself as a social liberal and a fiscal conservative.
He is certainly popular with the business community because of his read-my-lips promise not to raise taxes, which in New York are already higher than in most US cities.
"I can pledge that we will not raise taxes," he said. "I think it's exactly the wrong signal to send in a period when you're trying to encourage economic activity. If you want to destroy this city, raise taxes and people will leave, jobs will leave and your total revenue will go down."
He warned during his campaign that the World Trade Centre attack would hurt the city's finances so much that it would have to make deep cuts in the New York workforce. "We just can't afford to have all those people," he said, while excluding police, fireman and teachers.
While rebuilding downtown Manhattan will be a top priority, Mr Bloomberg takes the attitude that the only way to keep business from leaving town is to keep employees happy.
As a political neophyte who never before ran for election, he tends to make boardroom-type smart remarks, said a supporter who recalled Mr Bloomberg's well-publicised comment recently that companies should not hire people who live in the suburbs, because they "are not the best and the brightest" and those that want to go there "are not the people you want in your company."
But New York likes colourful personalities and the tabloids will have a ball with Mr Bloomberg. Divorced since 1993 and a self-described "mogul", the 59-year-old son of a bookkeeper in blue-collar Boston has a reputation as a man about town, hosting smart dinner parties at his Upper East Side apartment and flying his own plane and helicopter.
The fact that he survived old sexual harassment charges resurrected by the Green campaign - including a 1998 case where he allegedly said "Kill it!" to an employee who told him she was pregnant - testify to New Yorker's willingness to choose a businessmen rather than a career politician to guide the city through troubled times.
Conor O'Clery is International Business Editor of The Irish Times, based on Wall Street