Sales 2023: $ 12.500 billion (€ 11.560 billion)

Overview

Bloomberg LP is a global financial and media group whose services primarily consist of the sale of financial data. With its "Bloomberg Terminals," the company offers over 325,000 users worldwide a platform through which they can access a wide range of financial and market information. These include information and news services, a TV network, five radio stations, and two magazines (Bloomberg Businessweek, Bloomberg Markets). CEO Michael Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of the company. Ranked 12th among the world's richest people in 2024 (Forbes).

General Information

Headquarters
Bloomberg Tower
731 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10022
USA
Telephone: 001 212 3182000
website: bloomberg.com

Branches of trade: Financial information, news agency, internet services, free TV, radio, magazines, book publisher
Legal form: Private Company
fiscal year: 01.01. – 31.12.
Founding year: 1981

Basic economic data

	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019	2018	2017
Sales (in billion US$1,000,000)*	12,5	12,2	10	10	10	10	9,6
Employees	21.000	20.000	20.000	20.000	20.000	20.000	19.000

*Estimates, the company is not listed on the stock exchange.

Executives and Directors

Management:

• Michael Bloomberg, Co-founder, President, CEO
• Thomas Secunda, Co-founder, Vice Chairman
• Elizabeth Mazzeo, Chief Operating Officer
• John Micklethwait, Editor in Chief, Bloomberg News
• Richard DeScherer, Chief Legal Officer
• Josh Eastright, Chief Executive, Bloomberg Industry Group
• Justin B. Smith, Chief Executive, Bloomberg Media Group
  

Supervisory Board:

• Thomas Secunda, Bloomberg
• Matthew Winkler, Bloomberg
• Richard DeScherer, Bloomberg
• Peter Grauer, Chairman of the Board, DaVita HealthCare
• Arthur Levitt Jr., Goldman Sachs
• Jane Quinn, Main Street Connect
• Frank Savage, Savage Holdings
• Martin Geller, Geller & Company

History

Michael Bloomberg realized early on that business journalism would experience a boom thanks to globalization. He founded Innovative Marketing Systems in 1981 and subsequently began marketing the Bloomberg Terminal: a data monitor that provided "real-time market data, financial calculations, and other analytics" to Wall Street firms. The funding for the project came from the $10 million severance package Bloomberg received after leaving the investment bank Salomon Brothers. He had worked there as head of equity trading since the mid-1970s but left the company shortly after its privatization.

Financial services provider Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. became the first customer by purchasing several Bloomberg Terminals and secured a 30 percent stake in the company for $39 million in 1985. Merrill Lynch's entry also marked the beginning of serial production of Bloomberg Terminals. Today, the machines are located in approximately 320,000 offices and private homes worldwide, from the Vatican to the editorial offices of the New York Times, and, thanks to an annual rental fee of at least $24,000, account for approximately 85 percent of revenue.

The 1980s were the first heyday. Financial data trading became the core segment of the company, which was renamed Bloomberg LP in 1986. The company also survived the stock market crash of 1987 relatively unscathed, and foreign offices were subsequently opened in London and Tokyo. Since Bloomberg initially had only a small advertising budget, he founded the news agency Bloomberg Business News in 1990 to achieve greater media presence. The editorial team recruited well-known journalists, including those from the Wall Street Journal and Forbes. Since then, the news has been broadcast directly via the terminals. Newspapers were offered free use of the terminals, in return for which they had to agree to print stories under the provider's name. Since then, Bloomberg once explained its strategy: the company has been considered a reliable news source. The trade journal "Columbia Journalism Review" spoke in this context about the journalists repaying Bloomberg's freebie "with ink." Bloomberg regularly threatened to withdraw his information from newspapers that made too little use of it.

In 1992, Bloomberg purchased a New York radio station and converted it into a dedicated news channel. This was followed by an in-house television studio and a satellite TV station. In 1994, the first issue of "Bloomberg Personal Finance Magazine" was published. Bloomberg also began making business information available online in 1995. Shortly thereafter, information that had previously only been available via terminals was made PC-compatible and also sold to third-party providers. The electronic trading system "Bloomberg Tradebook" was also introduced that year. A year later, the company returned to publishing and published several books. Bloomberg has also produced the daily program for the New York TV station WPXN since 1996. In 1996, Bloomberg bought back 10 percent of the shares of Merrill Lynch, which at the time had an estimated market value of two billion dollars, for $200 million.

In 1998, Bridge Information Systems, a division of Reuters, pushed Bloomberg from second to third place among the most installed financial information terminals. Nevertheless, Bloomberg continued to grow through partnerships with internet companies and the publication of the magazines "Bloomberg Money" (1998) and "Bloomberg Wealth Manager" (1999). Collaborations with the Australian Stock Exchange and a Spanish television station also expanded its operations. In 2000, Merrill Lynch's e-commerce portal was made available to Bloomberg customers, and in 2004, it announced that it would supply business news to the E! Entertainment channel for three years.

For Bloomberg, the first years of the new millennium were characterized by fierce competition with its two major, now-merged rivals, Thomson and Reuters. In 2001, Bloomberg was sued for damages for disseminating a false report that led to severe losses in the share price of Emulex. The scandal sparked debate about whether the fierce competition between information providers and the resulting time pressure were unduly affecting the quality of reporting. Voices were raised, particularly among the staff of the Bloomberg News division, who feared a decline in the quality of reporting due to unqualified management. Those who had left the company spoke of a "journalistic sweatshop." The protest culminated in 2004 with the plan to form a union. This, however, never came to fruition.

In October 2007—Michael Bloomberg, now Mayor of New York, had since left his company—Bloomberg LP made headlines when several women filed another lawsuit against the company. As with the lawsuit in the early 1990s, the lawsuit involved women being downgraded in pay and reassigned to lower positions after they had informed the company of their pregnancy and taken maternity leave. While only four women originally filed a lawsuit in October 2007, the number of plaintiffs had grown to a total of 61 by May 2008. However, in the summer of 2011, the lawsuit was dismissed by a federal court.

The economic and financial crisis that began in 2007 presented both an opportunity and a problem for Bloomberg. An opportunity because, as a financial service provider, there was now much to report on. A problem because Bloomberg's business was based on leasing financial terminals, and customers were leaving: The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy alone cost Bloomberg up to 4,000 customers between 2007 and 2009. In addition, the distribution of economic data, Bloomberg's core business, suffered a significant credibility problem due to the revelation in May 2013 of in-house journalists spying on terminal activities. If the allegations are to be believed, premium customers (brokers, bankers, business leaders) were systematically spied on, and their private data was passed on. Furthermore, data such as private phone numbers or relationship status were allegedly misused for the reporters' personal interests. 

management

After his election as Mayor of New York in 2001, Michael Bloomberg (motto: "I believe I can do everything better") retired from the company. After three terms in office (2002 to 2013) and his retirement from politics, the multi-billionaire wanted to concentrate on various charitable activities. But Bloomberg couldn't let go. He first became involved in the day-to-day operations of his media and information company and returned to the top in the fall of 2014 (and oversaw everything from the integration of the various news outlets to the labeling of paper towels in office restrooms). Daniel Doctoroff, President and CEO of Bloomberg since 2007, saw his sphere of influence shrinking and announced his retirement at the end of 2014.

His 2020 presidential bid, in which Bloomberg was defeated in the primaries after weak performances in the TV debates, massively damaged his image. Critics say he should have donated the half a billion dollars he squandered on his megalomaniacal and ineffective campaign to charitable causes (although, to be fair, he already does so through his Bloomberg Philanthropy arm). Finally, his plan to move to the White House also brought the rumors that have been circulating for years about the toxic work environment at Bloomberg and the allegedly misogynistic remarks of Bloomberg himself under the public spotlight. While he could still defend his behavior in the 1990s by citing "bad jokes," the allegations have taken on new meaning in the MeToo era.

According to Forbes, Michael Bloomberg was the 12th richest person in the world in 2022, with a fortune of $82 billion. However, he does not appear in the September 2022 Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Business segments

Information services
"Bloomberg Professional Services" or the "Bloomberg Terminal" function as a platform on which financial data, news, reports, and analyses are presented. Additional functions such as email and e-commerce are integrated, although the interface design is often criticized as outdated and compared to the layout of MS-DOS. The terminals provide information on global stock market movements in seconds. Over time, Bloomberg began offering not only stock market data and corporate news, but also sports results, weather reports, and horoscopes via its terminals, as well as movie schedules and menus from select restaurants. According to Bloomberg, the aim is to offer the busy brokers moments of relaxation, because, fundamentally, "work and private life should be one and the same." Examples of other information services include "Bloomberg Government" (reports and analyses on Congress, government departments, and the White House), "Bloomberg Law" (information and database service on legal topics).

Intelligence services
"Bloomberg Markets," "Bloomberg Technology," "Bloomberg Pursuits," "Bloomberg Politics," "Bloomberg Opinion," and "Bloomberg Businessweek." Approximately 2,200 journalists worldwide work for Bloomberg News, producing 5,000 articles daily. In addition to Bloomberg Media, 400 other newspapers and magazines have licenses and can thus access Bloomberg information.

TV, radio and streaming
The pay-TV channel "Bloomberg Television," founded in 1994, now reaches over 310 million viewers worldwide and has affiliates in Europe, Africa, and Latin America. "Bloomberg Radio" broadcasts business news with the support of 2,700 journalists in over 120 countries. Bloomberg also launched "Quicktake," a streaming portal for financial news and documentaries.

print
Bloomberg acquired the loss-making business magazine "BusinessWeek," founded in 1929, from the media group McGraw-Hill in 2009. It also acquired the six-times-a-year magazine "Bloomberg Markets."

Current developments

Digital (but ad-based) subscriptions to Bloomberg services, which can be used regardless of owning a terminal computer, are becoming increasingly important for the company. In 2021, around 400,000 brokers were already using such a subscription—more than the 325,000 terminal users, who, however, still account for the majority of revenue (a terminal with more features costs around $20,000 per year, while a digital subscription costs only $415).

In the post-Trump era, Bloomberg's major advantage lies in its reliance on financial news rather than political news. Bloomberg has therefore been spared the massive traffic and ratings slumps that CNN, MSNBC, and others suffered after the end of the Trump presidency. However, the company expects the economic recovery after the coronavirus pandemic to significantly increase interest in business news—and thus attract more paying users. Also on the rise are so-called "verticals," news services focusing on specific topics such as climate change ("Bloomberg Green"), health insurance ("Prognosis"), and the ethnic composition of corporate workforces ("Equality").

In May 2022, Bloomberg announced that it would launch a new UK company, Bloomberg UK, as part of a comprehensive international strategy. Bloomberg UK plans to hire staff in the region and has launched a standalone website, a weekly video series, a podcast, and a new events series.