Editorials

At the end of the day: Mike Bloomberg for President? May 21, 2007 - No reporter cited

My former boss, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, is considering a run for president of the United States. Even though he is a Democrat-turned-Republican he would apparently run as a third-party candidate.

He has the money. His personal net worth is greater than $10 billion. Yes that is billion

Columnist Tony Blankley says Bloomberg’s candidacy would turn the race into a three-party freak show.

I worked for Bloomberg for three years in Bloomberg L.P. as a business editor. I don’t know him personally, met him only twice. The first time he and I were alone on a elevator together in the office building that housed Bloomberg on Park Avenue in New York City. I introduced myself and said I was a new hire. He recognized the southern accent and I told him I was from Arkansas.

I remember he said there were some famous people from Arkansas. I thought he was going to say Bill Clinton. He said the Stephens folks (that would be Stephens Inc. in Little Rock) and Sam Walton.
That was the gist of that conservation. Once on the bottom floor he was met by body guards and whisked away in a limousine.

A short history of Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg was an investment banker. At age 47, he, along with some other top flight executives, were sacked when Salomon Brothers was sold. He, according to his book, had $10 million in the bank. He was divorced, a father of two daughters, and was left trying to figure out what he would do with the rest of life.

When he was an investment banker selling securities and making deals, it was difficult to obtain information about stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments without lengthy digging through some library somewhere or going to a regulatory agency. This was in the late 1980’s and the dawn of the computer age and the internet.

Bloomberg realized that if an investment banker or stock broker or bond salesman had at his fingertips a computer with all of the information available on a financial instrument that person would have power, the great power of information.

He approached four other persons and Merrill Lynch Company with the idea. He promised Merrill he would have the computers to them in one year. He hired software writers and they went to work. About a year later they went to Merrill and fired up the computer which promptly crashed. But Merrill could see the enormous opportunity and financed the start up company.

The software was refined and today you can have a Bloomberg (the name of the computer and terminal) on your desk for about $1,500 a month or if you work for them, install the software on your home PC. Assume you have 1.5 million terminals out there and you can do the math.

Suffice to say, Bloomberg’s idea and execution made him one of the wealthiest persons on the planet.

Here is the way the company works. They hire the best and brightest they can find, pay them well, give them great insurance and retirement benefits, and work the heck out of them. I have never worked so hard in my life.

At the end of the day, suffice to say, working for Bloomberg is a challenging assignment.

(Next week: my second and last conversation with Bloomberg.)

I invite your comments ...

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