How did Bloomberg make his money? (+Details about Michael Bloomberg)

In this brief guide, we will try to answer the question How did Bloomberg make his money, as well as some other details about the billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

How did Bloomberg make his money?

Bloomberg has made most of his money through his company Bloomberg LP, which is a media and financial data services company, when he was let go from the Wall Street firm Salomon Brothers with a $10 million severance package.

Even though Bloomberg has made most of his money through Bloomberg LP, the company has been in the headlines for different reasons lately, because there have been allegations of sexual harassment against Bloomberg.

Before Bloomberg started making his money through Bloomberg LP, he was working at the Wall Street Solomon Brothers, from where he was let go with a severance package of 10 million USD, which he then used to fund his new venture, Bloomberg LP.

Questions about how Bloomberg made his money started gaining traction when he announced that he would not only be running for President in 2020 as a Democrat, he would also be funding his campaign with his own wealth and he refused donations along the same lines.

Even though he ended his unusual no donations campaign pretty soon when it became clear that he would not be winning the primaries or the eventual nomination, he continued to support the Democratic nominee, and now President-Elect, Joe Biden.

Currently Michael Bloomberg is valued at about $58.4 billion, making him the 9th wealthiest person in the world.

The source through which Michael Bloomberg has made most of his money, Bloomberg LP, is a privately held financial, software, data, and media company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City and he did not establish it alone.

Bloomberg LP was founded with the help of Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan, Charles Zegar, and a 12% ownership investment by Merrill Lynch, and since then it has grown significantly and continued to make great money for Bloomberg, who still owns 88% of the company.

Bloomberg LP: The Bloomberg Software Company and More

Bloomberg L.P. is responsible for financial software tools and enterprise applications such as analytics and equity trading platform, data services, and news to financial companies and organizations through the Bloomberg Terminal, via its Bloomberg Professional Service, which is its core revenue-generating product.

Bloomberg L.P.  is not just limited to that though, it also includes a wire service called Bloomberg News and a global television network, called Bloomberg Television.

Furthermore, another reason Bloomberg makes so much money from his company is because it also consists of websites, radio stations (Bloomberg Radio), subscription-only newsletters, and two magazines: Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg Markets

Additionally, the Bloomberg LP leadership currently includes Michael Bloomberg, Peter Grauer, and Thomas Secunda, and the most revenue comes from their product Bloomberg Professional Services.

Sales from the Bloomberg professional services, also known as the Bloomberg terminal, have made Bloomberg a lot of money, as they accounted for more than 85 percent of Bloomberg L.P.’s annual revenue in 2011 as well.

The financial data vendor’s proprietary computer system, starting at $24,000 per user per year allows subscribers to access the Bloomberg Professional service to monitor and analyze real-time financial data, search financial news, obtain price quotes and send electronic messages through the Bloomberg Messaging Service. The Terminal covers both public and private markets globally.

The Bloomberg Terminal is such a great financial tool that it has actually made an appearance in Popular culture as well.

Bloomberg Terminal is featured in the show The Newsroom where the financial correspondent of a news channel, Sloan Sabbith (played by Olivia Munn) spends a great deal of time lovingly admiring her new toy, saying “They finally got one for me, a Bloomberg terminal. This is a $24,000 system that gives me instantaneous access to all the financial information in the world”.

She also goes on to use it to figure out a mystery related to the storyline, and in doing so probably makes Bloomberg a lot of money because his sales likely shot up after the lovely and smart Sloan Sabbith endorsed it.

Michael Bloomberg: Career and Primary Election

Michael Rubens Bloomberg was born February 14, 1942, and he is best known as an American businessman, politician, philanthropist, and author and he is the majority owner and co-founder of Bloomberg L.P.. 

Another great accomplishment that Bloomberg is known for is that he was the mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, and a Democratic candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president of the United States.

Bloomberg grew up in Medford, Massachusetts, and graduated from Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School, and his career began at the securities brokerage Salomon Brothers, from where he was let go in 1981 when it was acquired by another group.

Bloomberg spent the about twenty years as the chairman and CEO of Bloomberg LP and in 2020, Forbes ranked him as the sixteenth-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $48 billion as of April 7, 2020 but then as of July 21, 2020, Bloomberg ranked 8th in Forbes 400 with net worth $60.1 billion.

However, Bloomberg is not just the average billionaire, and he has done a great deal for society, which is evident in the fact that since he signed The Giving Pledge, Bloomberg has given away $8.2 billion.

Bloomberg served as the 108th mayor of New York City after Rudy Giuliani, and he was first elected in 2001, after which he held office for three consecutive terms.

He has been known to pursue socially liberal and fiscally moderate policies, and he has a technocratic managerial style, and he has also held the role of a full-time philanthropist.

Bloomberg’s political ideologies have been reported as being a Republican as well, and some of his views and leanings are certainly that of a Moderate, but he doesn’t seem to associate very much with the GOP and both his Mayoral runs and his Presidential campaign have been as a Democrat.

When he was the mayor of New York, Bloomberg established public charter schools, rebuilt urban infrastructure, and supported gun control, public health initiatives, and environmental protections, which were all lauded by most.

The rezoning of parts of New York was another thing Bloomberg oversaw, and this facilitated massive and widespread new commercial and residential construction after the September 11 attacks. 

However, Bloomberg’s mayor terms also came under scrutiny and he received significant criticism for his expansion of the city’s stop and frisk program, but he withdrew the support for this policy by apologizing for instituting it before his 2020 presidential run

Bloomberg announced his campaign for the Presidential election in November 2019, but he soon ended his campaign in March 2020, after having won only 61 delegates, but throughout his run, Bloomberg self-funded $935 million for his candidacy, which set the record for the most expensive U.S. presidential primary campaign.

Michael Bloomberg: Family and Children

Michael Bloomberg is currently in a relationship with Diana Taylor, who is the former New York State banking superintendent, with whom he has been living since 2000, and he has two daughters, Emma and Georgina.

Bloomberg married Susan Elizabeth Barbara Brown who was a British national from Yorkshire, United Kingdom, in 1975.

The couple had two daughters: Emma, who was born 1979 and Georgina who was born in 1983, and the girls were featured on Born Rich, a 2003 documentary film about the children of the extremely wealthy. 

Bloomberg and Brown divorced in 1993, but he has said she remains his “best friend”.

Bloomberg’s younger sister, Marjorie Tiven, has been Commissioner of the New York City Commission for the United Nations, Consular Corps and Protocol, since February 2002.

Michael Bloomberg Quotes

Here are some of the quotes from Michael Bloomberg:

“If you look at people, whether in business or government, who haven’t had any moral compass, who’ve just changed to say whatever they thought the popular thing was, in the end they’re losers.”

“The public is upset. If they haven’t lost their job, they know somebody that has. If they haven’t lost their house, they know somebody that has. What do you do? When something’s wrong, it’s the government’s job to fix it, it must be the government that’s responsible for causing it.”

“Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should the government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion?”

“One of the great dangers here is going and categorizing anybody from one religion as a subversive person. That’s not true… That would let the subversives win. That’s what they want us to do.

“Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody’s got to pay for them so they’re a necessary evil.”

“You have to take away some of the tax breaks for the wealthy, and you have to cut back on some entitlements. Because, unless we do all of these things, it just doesn’t work. And what’s good theater and what’s good politics isn’t necessarily good economic policy.”

“You don’t make spending decisions, investment decisions, hiring decisions, or whether-you’re-going-to-look-for-a-job decisions when you don’t know what’s going to happen.

Conclusion 

In this brief guide, we tried to answer the question How did Bloomberg make his money, as well as some other details about the billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

Michael Bloomberg and his net worth came into spotlight following the Presidential election in 2020 because of his bid for the position of the Democratic candidate, which ended pretty quickly, but despite that he has not stopped being in the headlines due to his efforts towards helping people in the COVID 19 pandemic.

Bloomberg and his money are not at the level of many other billionaires right now, but he is still in the top 1 percent, which naturally puts him in the limelight.

If you have any questions like “How did Bloomberg make his money?” please feel free to reach out to us at any time.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): How did Bloomberg make his money?

Citations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bloomberg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bloomberg

https://www.celebworth.net/2018/07/how-much-money-does-michael-bloomberg.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgina_Bloomberg