Michael Bloomberg

Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942)

 is an American businessman and politician who is currently Mayor of New York City. With a net worth of $25 billion in 2012, he is also the 10th-richest person in the United States. He is the founder and 88% owner of Bloomberg L.P

Michael Bloomberg started his New York City story sweating in his underwear in Salomon Brothers' vaults. And in a little over 20 years he turned a $10 million severance package from that now defunct bank into a multi-billion dollar company Wall Street can't live without. The inspiring journey, with plenty of highs and lows, is one of a man who enjoys both success and philanthropy. His current gig is only paying him $1 per year, but it's not like he needs the money.  According to Forbes, he's now the 11th richest man in the world. He invested $4 million of his $10 million Salomon Brothers severance package into his start-up. His company was originally called Innovative Market Solutions, and consisted of four others, who collaborated to create and program a computer terminal that let traders stay informed about the Treasury bond market.

After leaving Salomon Brothers, Mayor Bloomberg started his own business because “nobody offered me a job, I was probably too proud to go look for one, and I said well why not start your own company.”

And before he became the three-time Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg made billions running the financial information company bearing his name. But it might never have happened if he hadn’t been fired from Wall Street during the early days of his career.

A hands-on founder who studied engineering, Mayor Bloomberg remembers spending “every Saturday at an engineer’s barn up in Connecticut” physically helping build the hardware (pointing out this was before PC’s and the internet) and flying to Chicago to tackle related infrastructure repairs. If anything broke he says it remained that way until he could catch a flight. Reflecting on those first three years, Bloomberg says, the first year, “You don’t think about the downside, the second year is the difficult one, the third year you see that light at the end of the tunnel.” Looking ahead, the Mayor recognizes that “intellectual capital” is crucial for making New York a world-class tech center and says “the business strategy, if you will of New York  City Government is not to subsidize companies, not to pay for people to bring jobs here, it is to invest in parks and cultural institutions and better public schools and lower crime to get the best and brightest to want to live here.”

Bloomberg's company became wildly successful during the 1980s.

In 1986, the company's name changed from Innovative Market Systems to Bloomberg L.P.Bloomberg's company also moved to 499 Park Ave in New York. In 1987, Bloomberg sold its 5,000th terminal and launched its trading systems platform. In 1989, Bloomberg bought back 1/3 of Merrill Lynch's 30% stake for $200 million.  With that valuation, Bloomberg's company was worth $2 billion only eight years after its launch.

 Today, Bloomberg L.P. has over 310,000 subscriptions to its financial news and information service.  Bloomberg now employs more than 15,000 people throughout its several offices around the world.

 Bloomberg L.P. is a financial software, news and data company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981, which now controls approximately a third of the global financial data market. The company generates a profit from providing financial software tools such as an analytics and equity trading platform, data services and news to financial companies and organizations around the world through the Bloomberg Terminal. Bloomberg L.P. has grown to include a global news service, including television, radio, the Internet and printed publications, most recently acquiring Business Week. 

Bloomberg is a businessman and politician. The son of a bookkeeper, Bloomberg put himself through Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University, where he earned an MBA in 1966. His first Wall Street job was with Salomon Brothers, where he quickly climbed the ladder, becoming partner in 1972.

When Salomon Brothers was bought in 1981, Bloomberg started his own company, Bloomberg L.P., built around a financial information computer that revolutionized the way securities data was stored and consumed. The company was enormously successful and soon branched into the media business with more than 100 offices worldwide. As one of the wealthiest men in the world, Bloomberg chose to turn his attentions to philanthropy, with an emphasis on education, medical research and the arts.