Chapter 1
From Salomon to Bloomberg: The Birth of a Financial Empire
In the summer of 1981, a 39-year-old Wall Street executive named Michael Bloomberg sat across from John Gutfreund and Henry Kaufman, hearing the words that would change his life: "Here's $10 million; you're history." After fifteen successful years at Salomon Brothers, Bloomberg was being pushed out following the firm's merger with Phibro Corporation. While most would view this as a devastating career setback, Bloomberg saw opportunity. That evening, he surprised his wife Sue with a sable jacket-a gesture meant to reassure her that despite his firing, they would "still be players." The next morning, October 1, 1981, he started what would become Bloomberg LP. What began with four people and a coffee pot would eventually transform into a global information powerhouse with 19,000 employees across 120 countries, 325,000 terminals worldwide, and a news organization that has won every major journalism award. This wasn't just a business success story-it was the beginning of a revolution in financial information that would fundamentally transform how Wall Street operated. The man who had been deemed dispensable would build an empire that would make him one of the world's wealthiest individuals and eventually lead him to the mayoralty of New York City.
Chapter 2
Building Character: The Foundations of Success
Growing up in blue-collar Medford, Massachusetts, Michael Bloomberg's character was shaped by his middle-class upbringing. His father William, an accountant at a local dairy, worked six or seven days a week, while his mother Charlotte instilled intellectual independence and practical problem-solving. The family always ate dinner together with proper linen tablecloths and serving dishes-his mother insisting that "the best should be for family, not just guests." This created a cohesive unit where "mine" was replaced by "ours," a philosophy that would later influence Bloomberg's management style.
Education provided mixed experiences. At his vocationally-focused high school, Bloomberg remained bored until senior "honors" courses finally challenged him. Outside formal education, he thrived in Boy Scouts, earning every merit badge and achieving Eagle Scout rank early. Saturday lectures at Boston's Museum of Science taught him intellectual honesty and precise observation-skills that would serve him well throughout his career.
At Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg was academically mediocre in engineering but excelled socially as fraternity president and campus leader. These organizational abilities proved more valuable than technical knowledge. Harvard Business School followed, where he noticed that street smarts and common sense better predicted career success than academic brilliance. When graduation approached in 1966, Bloomberg expected military service but was rejected for flat feet. With no career plan and student loans to repay, he interviewed with Wall Street firms.
During these interviews, Bloomberg met William R. Salomon ("Billy") and found him approachable, unlike the more formal executives at other firms. This first-name basis with Salomon's managing partner showed him where he belonged. When offered $9,000 at Salomon versus $14,000 at Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg negotiated poorly, asking for $11,500 and getting exactly that-a $9,000 salary plus a $2,500 loan that would be forgiven through bonuses. Years later, he would frame both the loan note with Gutfreund's signature and the announcement of his partnership-a symbol of how far he had come.
Chapter 3
The Salomon Years: Meritocracy and Mentorship
Bloomberg fit perfectly into Salomon Brothers' culture, which valued go-getters and tolerated eccentricities, unlike elite firms that coveted pedigree and Ivy League connections. What mattered then was the organization, not the individual. The firm maintained a strict prohibition against using the first person singular-Billy Salomon once publicly scolded a trader who told a customer "I'll buy 50,000 shares," questioning how he got that kind of money in his personal account.
The Salomon partnership was uniquely direct. Everyone important worked in the same room, trading shoulder to shoulder. Disagreements flared openly, compromises were made quickly, and the storm passed. There was no corporate democracy or consensus-building-William R. Salomon made all important decisions in this benevolent dictatorship, setting the culture through consistent leadership and personal example.
Bloomberg's career began humbly in June 1966 working in "the Cage," physically counting securities by hand in his underwear in an unair-conditioned bank vault. After moving through Purchase and Sales, his big break came when he joined the Equities Desk with Jay Perry to build Salomon's block trading business. They became a dynamite sales team with the ultimate weapon: the firm's capital and five smart traders ready to "pull the trigger," creating urgency with their "buy now or risk buying never" approach.
Block trading was revolutionary-trading stocks like bonds in single large transactions rather than accumulating shares over time. This changed the buy-side/sell-side relationship from an "old-boy" network to open competition based on price. Bloomberg made himself indispensable by arriving at 7am (before everyone except Billy Salomon) and staying later than everyone except John Gutfreund. This omnipresence wasn't burdensome-he loved what he was doing.
Despite his success, Bloomberg's path wasn't always smooth. Six years after being hired, when he expected to make partner as the block-trading superstar, he was devastated to find his name missing from the list. Rather than quitting, he channeled his anger into work, completing one of the firm's largest trades the next day. Three months later, without explanation, he was made a general partner alongside Don Feuerstein. This experience taught him the value of patience and persistence.
Chapter 4
Work Ethic and Entrepreneurial Philosophy
Bloomberg has never understood why everyone doesn't make themselves indispensable. During a summer job at a Cambridge real estate company, he arrived at 6:30am while the "professionals" started at 9:30. By getting there early to answer the phone, he booked all the apartment viewings with incoming students. All day long, his colleagues wondered why everyone asked for Mr. Bloomberg.
This philosophy-that 80 percent of life is just showing up-has guided his career. While you can't control your starting advantages or genetic intelligence, you can control how hard you work. Bloomberg always outworked everyone else while still maintaining balance-devoting twelve hours to work and twelve hours to fun daily. Unlike many classmates, he never had a rigid "budget" for his future or comprehensive career scheme, believing that planning shouldn't get in the way of doing.
Success, in Bloomberg's view, comes from stringing together many small incremental advances rather than hitting one lottery jackpot. He advises against devising rigid Five-Year Plans, noting that central planning didn't work for Stalin or Mao, and it won't work for entrepreneurs either. Every significant advance he or his company ever made was evolutionary rather than revolutionary. He stays flexible-often what they accomplished wasn't what they set out to do, as unforeseen uses and customers appeared.
Whatever your idea is, Bloomberg believes you've got to do more of it than anyone else-which is easier if you structure things so you like doing them. Success leads to more enjoyment, which leads to doing more, creating a virtuous cycle. He truly pities people who don't like their jobs-they struggle unhappily for ultimately less success, giving them even more reason to hate their occupations.
Chapter 5
From Firing to Founding: The Birth of Bloomberg LP
At thirty-nine, with the values his parents taught him, $10 million from Salomon, and confidence based on little more than a bruised ego, Bloomberg began the third phase of his life. When Goldman Sachs didn't call with a partnership offer, he faced three options: look for another job, retire, or start his own company. Working for someone else wasn't exciting, retirement would drive him crazy, so entrepreneurship was the clear path forward.
While finishing his last month at Salomon, working 7am to 7pm shifts right up to the end, Bloomberg considered his options. He lacked resources for manufacturing, had no musical ability for entertainment, no interest in retail, and impatience with government. Another securities trading firm? Been there, done that. Consulting? He wasn't much of a bystander.
He realized the economy was shifting toward services, and nobody had more knowledge of the securities industry and how technology could help it than he did. Wall Street in 1981 was still using No. 2 pencils and seat-of-the-pants guesses. He conceived a business built around securities data collection with software allowing non-mathematicians to analyze it-something showing instantly whether government bonds were appreciating faster than corporate bonds would make mediocre investors smart.
Bloomberg started with $300,000 from his Salomon Brothers windfall, renting a tiny one-room office on Madison Avenue with a view of an alley-quite different from his previous multi-acre trading floor overlooking New York harbor. He recruited four former Salomon proteges: Duncan MacMillan, Chuck Zegar, Tom Secunda, and one other who left immediately, demanding more compensation than others. As Sue later told him when he expressed sympathy for the one who left: "Don't feel sorry. He didn't have the guts for it. The others ran risks. They alone deserve the rewards."
After forming the company, they did consulting work that brought in cash and Wall Street legitimacy. This led to their first major sale to Merrill Lynch. After completing a $100,000 study for them, Bloomberg pitched their proposed financial information system to Ed Moriarty and his entire staff. When Merrill's head of software development claimed they could build it themselves but couldn't start for six months, Bloomberg seized his opportunity: "I'll get it done in six months and if you don't like it, you don't have to pay for it!" Moriarty immediately accepted, giving them their breakthrough deal.
Chapter 6
The Bloomberg Terminal: Revolutionizing Financial Information
The Bloomberg Terminal was designed to put more information at people's fingertips more quickly and accurately than they could otherwise get it. It evolved to allow users to run an ever-wider array of functions developed by thousands of programmers and engineers. The Terminal serves investment firms, regulators, security issuers, corporations, banks, pension funds, and universities. It enables users to select investments, run scenario analyses, communicate securely, trade financial instruments, control risk exposure, and research information unavailable elsewhere.
After months of fourteen-hour days at "Starship Bloomberg," they finally delivered their first Terminal to Merrill Lynch in June 1983. Bloomberg carried the Terminal while Duncan carried the keyboard and screen in a taxi to Merrill's office. They'd been struggling with a software bug all weekend, but miraculously it was fixed while they were in transit. When Bloomberg saw "Loading Software" flash on the screen in bond trader Danny Napoli's office, he knew they'd succeeded. Though the machine crashed after running just one function, it didn't matter-they had delivered something on time (close enough), something that worked (sort of).
Their agreement with Merrill was $600,000 plus $1,000 monthly per Terminal for two years, payable only after the system worked reliably. This first customer led to others-the Bank of England, the Vatican, the World Bank, and every Federal Reserve Bank. Bloomberg calculated on an envelope: "$264,000 plus $600,000-we'll cover costs and stay in business." Today that amount doesn't even cover the company's reception area's flower bill.
Superior data has always differentiated Bloomberg from competitors. Rather than treating data collection as clerical work, they added an analytical component, hiring smart people to "scrub" and categorize information where it truly belongs. When faced with different accounting standards worldwide, they hired consultants to teach them all global accounting systems. This allowed them to highlight discrepancies between companies using different standards-at Bloomberg, problems spur solutions.
Chapter 7
Disrupting Financial Journalism
While traditional media largely dismissed financial reporting as "agate" unworthy of serious journalistic attention, Bloomberg recognized an opportunity. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 had shifted global focus from Cold War politics to capitalism and money flows. They built a news operation combining Wall Street expertise with journalistic talent, just as newspapers were struggling and wire services like UPI were failing.
Bloomberg first met Matt Winkler, a Wall Street Journal reporter specializing in bond markets, while making popcorn to share with staff and customers. Winkler was analyzing why Bloomberg was beginning to challenge Dow Jones's dominance in financial news. He would later become pivotal in expanding their journalism operations.
By the mid-1980s, the Bloomberg Terminal had become essential for bond traders worldwide. Winkler first learned about Bloomberg while interviewing a Merrill Lynch trader in London who revealed Bloomberg as his source for comprehensive bond market information. With bonds becoming increasingly prominent in financial markets due to deregulation, budget deficits, and inflation-fighting high interest rates, their system had become indispensable.
In 1987, Bloomberg convinced the Wall Street Journal and Associated Press to use Bloomberg as their sole supplier for daily U.S. government bond prices, replacing the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. While the Fed still used runners to physically deliver paper price sheets that were manually typed under deadline pressure (causing frequent errors), Bloomberg could deliver perfectly accurate, more timely prices electronically in seconds. This arrangement effectively made Bloomberg the definitive source for the market that influenced all other markets worldwide.
When Bloomberg asked Winkler for advice about entering the text news business, Winkler immediately tested his commitment to journalistic ethics by asking what he'd do if a major customer threatened to cancel Terminals over a negative but true story. Bloomberg's unhesitating answer-"Go with the story"-convinced him he was serious about journalism. They launched their news service without a detailed business plan, just a handshake. Unlike competitors who were cutting back during the 1990-91 recession, they were expanding, with Terminal rental revenue supporting their news operation from the start.
Chapter 8
Fighting the Establishment: No Is No Answer
Establishment ignorance and arrogance created barriers that Bloomberg had to overcome. When they expanded Bloomberg News into Washington D.C., they encountered unexpected resistance from the journalistic establishment that controlled access to essential information. The House/Senate Standing Committee of Correspondents rejected them simply because they were digital rather than print-based. Despite serving major financial institutions worldwide, committee chairman Jeffrey Birnbaum of the Wall Street Journal dismissed them with "We don't have criteria for you." Meanwhile, news agencies from dictatorships had credentials while Bloomberg was excluded.
When direct approaches failed, they sought indirect solutions. They leveraged their relationship with the Associated Press and proposed a barter arrangement with the New York Times: Bloomberg would provide news content they could publish at their discretion, and their publication of Bloomberg stories would counter the argument that they weren't "published" in the traditional sense. When Max Frankel, the Times executive editor, agreed in 1991, Bloomberg had its first newspaper customer. Within a year, every major newspaper in the United States wanted the same arrangement.
In Japan, they faced an even tougher battle against the kisha (reporter) clubs that controlled access to government and corporate press releases. As non-Japanese reporters, they were systematically excluded from timely information critical to their business. Bloomberg News became the first foreign media organization to directly confront this discriminatory system. When denied access at the Tokyo Stock Exchange, they staged civil disobedience, stationing reporters by the club's mailboxes with lawyers present and TV cameras rolling. After a 24-month battle, in October 1993, they were finally admitted to the kisha club with a unanimous vote.
Chapter 9
The Bloomberg Way: Management Philosophy
At Bloomberg, they prioritize people through a distinctive approach to workplace design, placing offices in premium locations worldwide with luxury interiors and revolutionary open floor plans where no one - including Mike Bloomberg himself - has a private office. This radical open layout serves multiple purposes: it forces employees to develop concentration skills despite distractions, enables rapid information sharing, and allows workers to absorb valuable peripheral information from nearby conversations and interactions. The transparency creates an environment of fairness and collaboration that no management directive could achieve. Their London headquarters, designed in partnership with renowned architect Norman Foster, physically manifests these core values through innovative features like a central spiral ramp instead of elevators, circular workstation clusters, and communal tables strategically placed to maximize spontaneous interaction and knowledge sharing.
The company takes a unique stance on workplace perks, deliberately avoiding status symbols that create hierarchical divisions. There are no reserved parking spaces, executive dining rooms, or corner offices that typically signal corporate status. Instead, as compensation increases with seniority, Bloomberg expects proportionally more work and commitment, not less. Their comprehensive benefits package is designed to support long-term career development, including extensive healthcare coverage for employees and families, continuous professional training programs, clear internal promotion pathways, and industry-competitive compensation. This approach has resulted in remarkably low turnover rates, with many employees staying with the company for decades.
Bloomberg's philosophy on growth is uncompromising - they believe organizations must grow or die, with no middle ground. This stems from the recognition that customer needs evolving constantly and competitors emerge from unexpected directions. Even the most successful products eventually become obsolete, and customer relationships require continuous nurturing to maintain. The company believes that without new challenges and opportunities, employees become complacent and work loses its meaning. Continuous growth creates natural opportunities for promotion and advancement, helping retain top talent who might otherwise leave for management positions elsewhere. This growth mindset extends beyond financial metrics to include technological innovation, market expansion, and professional development.
When it comes to expansion, Bloomberg maintains a strong "build, don't buy" philosophy. Mike Bloomberg openly acknowledges he would make a poor venture capitalist because he consistently views acquisition targets as overpriced, believing his team can develop similar capabilities internally at lower cost. This stance reflects deeper concerns about corporate integration - neither organizational cultures nor technical systems tend to merge smoothly. Throughout the company's history, they've maintained this discipline, making only a handful of strategic acquisitions: Businessweek magazine to expand their media presence, the Bureau of National Affairs (now Bloomberg BNA) for legal and regulatory expertise, and Barclays Risk Analytics and Index Solutions to enhance their financial data offerings. Each of these rare purchases was carefully selected to fill specific capability gaps that would have taken too long to develop internally.
Chapter 10
Philanthropy and Public Service: Giving Back
On October 1, 1981, Bloomberg began his entrepreneurial journey after being fired from Salomon Brothers. Fifteen years later to the day, he sent Johns Hopkins University a multimillion-dollar check as part of a $55 million contribution. The intervening years had been extraordinarily good to him, and he was determined to give back. Within a few years, he was donating $200 million annually, eventually establishing Bloomberg Philanthropies which gave away $702 million in 2017 alone. His lifetime giving has exceeded $6 billion, including $1.5 billion to Hopkins.
From the beginning, Bloomberg committed to giving away most of his wealth during his lifetime, gladly signing the Giving Pledge organized by Gates and Buffett in 2010. He's always believed the ultimate financial planning is to "bounce the check to the undertaker."
During his twelve years as mayor of New York, Bloomberg discovered the powerful potential of public-private partnerships. Government traditionally struggles with innovation for two reasons: political risk aversion and fiduciary duty to taxpayers. Philanthropy can bridge this gap by providing resources for testing new ideas while reducing financial risk. Over his twelve years as mayor, they raised $1.4 billion in philanthropic contributions that funded various programs from a leadership academy for high school principals to innovative anti-poverty initiatives and public art installations.
At Bloomberg Philanthropies, their simple goal is helping the greatest number of people live better, longer lives. They apply business and government lessons to philanthropy through several key principles: leading from the front on politically difficult issues like their $180 million Beyond Coal campaign; identifying unmet needs like global road safety; spreading proven solutions; following data religiously; focusing on cities where pragmatic leadership thrives; forming partnerships; and empowering advocates to fight special interests, particularly in public health.
Bloomberg gives from responsibility but also because it's deeply rewarding. Giving while alive allows him to witness the impact and share satisfaction with others. He's endowed professorships honoring his mother at Johns Hopkins and his father at Harvard, and created the Charlotte Bloomberg Children's Center and William H. Bloomberg MDA Jerusalem Station. He opposes eliminating inheritance taxes because dynastic fortunes threaten democracy, and America's wealthiest have traditionally given back substantially. Private philanthropy is uniquely American-you don't need great wealth to make a difference, as small gifts collectively achieve tremendous impact.
Chapter 11
America's Future: Technology and Competition
The future holds tremendous promise. Thanks to agricultural and technological advances, fewer people go hungry or remain illiterate than ever before. Electronic communications expose repressive systems to scrutiny, empowering citizens to demand better. Technology has been humanity's great benefactor-from separating sewage from water supply to eradicating smallpox and nearly eliminating polio.
America is uniquely positioned for success in the global economy. Americans speak English, the closest thing to a universal language. Free internal borders with a single currency create a massive unified market. Securities markets are viewed as fair thanks to strict SEC regulations. Capital availability for industry and startups remains unmatched.
Countries relying solely on low labor costs face inevitable undercutting by even cheaper competitors. By contrast, American workers aspire to advance, and the economy has pivoted from smokestacks to technology, advanced manufacturing, entertainment, and services. This focus on value-added industries maintains margins and salaries while generating capital for reinvestment in innovation, keeping America competitive despite federal government failures in education, immigration, infrastructure, and trade policy.
At Bloomberg, they don't want fair fights-they want advantages. The math is simple: your chance of winning five consecutive fair contests is only about 3%. Working harder, thinking smarter, making quicker decisions, avoiding self-delusion about capabilities, and sticking to what they do well gives them an edge over rivals. As Bloomberg reflects on his journey from middle-class Medford to global business leader, he remains convinced that tomorrow will be better than today-and that the principles of hard work, innovation, and giving back that guided his career remain the surest path to both personal and societal success.
