Michael Bloomberg was 39 when his 15-year career at Wall Street investment bank Salomon Brothers came to an end in 1981. A general partner at the firm, Bloomberg left as Salomon was being acquired by Phibro Corporation and received about $10 million for his stake. Forbes now estimates Bloomberg’s fortune at about $109.4 billion and his lifetime charitable giving at $25.4 billion.
Rather than use the money to retire or join another Wall Street firm, he put it towards an idea shaped by his years in finance. Bloomberg believed financial professionals needed faster and more efficient access to market information, and he set out to build a company around that idea. The venture became Bloomberg LP and eventually grew into a global financial information and media company.
Bloomberg joined Salomon Brothers in 1966 after graduating from Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School. In 1981, Salomon Brothers was acquired by Phibro Corporation, and Bloomberg was among the partners who left the firm. His departure ended a 15-year Wall Street career, but it also gave him the financial resources and independence to pursue his own business idea. When Bloomberg left Salomon Brothers, he received roughly $10 million for his partnership stake. Instead of looking for another position in finance, he founded Innovative Market Systems in 1981 with former Salomon colleagues Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan and Charles Zegar. Merrill Lynch eventually ordered 20 terminals and invested $30 million in the company for a 30% stake. The company launched Bloomberg Business News in 1990, later known as Bloomberg News, creating a newsroom focused heavily on financial and business reporting. At 39, after 15 years on Wall Street, he left the firm with about $10 million and chose to build a financial technology company rather than return to another investment bank. More than four decades later, Forbes estimates that Bloomberg is worth about $109.4 billion and has given away $25.4 billion during his lifetime.
He began in an entry-level position and worked his way up through the investment bank, eventually becoming a general partner. He also took responsibility for the firm’s information systems, giving him an early understanding of how technology could change the way financial professionals accessed and processed market data. Bloomberg has described the event as being fired from the only full-time job he had known. The money became the financial foundation for his next venture. The company’s objective was to provide financial professionals with better access to market information through technology. Bloomberg had seen at Salomon how valuable timely financial data could be, as well as how difficult it could be to gather information from multiple sources. His new company aimed to put data, analytics and financial information directly in front of users through computer terminals. The company secured an important early customer when Merrill Lynch agreed to purchase Bloomberg’s financial information terminals. The system developed into the Bloomberg Terminal, which combined real-time financial data, analytics, news and communications in a single platform. The terminal gave traders and other financial professionals a faster way to access information and analyse markets. As more financial institutions adopted the technology, Bloomberg LP grew from a small start-up into a major financial information business. The terminal remains one of the company’s best-known products and became the foundation for Bloomberg’s expansion into other areas. Bloomberg’s business eventually moved beyond financial terminals. Bloomberg LP subsequently expanded into television, radio, magazines and digital media. The combination of financial data, technology and journalism became a defining feature of the company. Bloomberg’s business model also allowed the company to build a large recurring-revenue operation serving financial institutions around the world. Over time, Bloomberg LP became a global financial information and media company, while Bloomberg retained a substantial ownership stake. Bloomberg’s journey from Salomon Brothers to one of the world’s richest people began with an unexpected career setback. The idea eventually became Bloomberg LP, transforming how financial professionals accessed market information and creating the foundation of his fortune. What began as the end of a Wall Street career ultimately became the starting point for one of the world’s largest financial information businesses and one of America’s biggest philanthropic fortunes.