A doer and a problem-solver?
INSIDE THE EMPIRE OF MICHAEL BLOOMBERG – THE NEWEST AND MOST SERIOUS DEMOCRATIC CHALLENGER TO TRUMP IN THE 2020 ELECTION
Inside the empire of Bloomberg, the most serious Democratic challenger to Trump
He was the billionaire businessman and untested politician who took charge of a scarred city and steered it into a new era, shaping a New York that projected glittering prosperity, governmental innovation and cosmopolitan confidence.
Michael Bloomberg will be highlighting, and answering for, that legacy in his newlylaunched Democratic presidential campaign as “a doer and a problem-solver”.
Four years ago Bloomberg paid 16 million pounds for a house once owned by the writer George Eliot on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. The five-bedroom house features a painting by St Paul’s Cathedral artist Sir James Thornhill, a 91ft garden and views of the Thames.
Yet, the 77-year-old is unlikely to have time to spend gazing out at the river after ending weeks of speculation on Sunday by seeking to become the Democrats’ US presidential nominee. “We cannot afford four more years of President Trump’s reckless and unethical actions,” said the 5ft 7in New Yorker, who is said to have exaggerated his height on his driver’s licence. “The stakes could not be higher.”
THE INDEPENDENT POLITICIAN
His run marks the biggest gamble yet in a zigzagging political career in which Bloomberg has twice served as Republican mayor of New York City, followed by a third term as an independent after controversially rewriting the city’s electoral rules. Bloomberg governed with a focus on functionality and a vision of New York rebounding from the trauma of 9/11 to become safer, shinier and more of a magnet than before.
THE MAYOR OF NEW YORK
The Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent (now turned Democrat again) was unbeholden to the city’s Democratic power structure or
$10m Bloomberg’s severance pay before setting up a new firm
the combative law-and-order conservatism of predecessor Rudy Giuliani. But Bloomberg’s City Hall wasn’t without ideology of its own: data-driven “tech-friendly” committed to making national waves on gun control, public health and climate change” unapologetic and unafraid of backlash if officials were confident they’d be proven right in the end.
The approach did much to transform the city. But many New Yorkers were chafing as Bloomberg’s tenure neared its 2013 end, in a third term he’d won after engineering a termlimits-law change.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES?
Some felt Bloomberg’s New York worked better for a welloff elite than for others, including hundreds of thousands of black and Hispanic men experiencing police “stop and frisks” each year, the homeless whose numbers had surged, the tenants
$33.5b of advertising slots bought by Bloomberg in 20 states
who rued seeing rents rise along with pricey skyscrapers. The term-limited mayor’s successor, Democrat Bill de Blasio, told a campaign “tale of two cities” that resonated with voters who felt Bloomberg was out of touch.
Nonetheless, Bloomberg left office with nearly two-thirds of voters saying he made the city better, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, and a long list of important mayoral moments.
TAKING ON TRUMP
Bloomberg has twice considered standing for president as an independent, but is now running for the Democrats after deciding that none of the party’s prospective candidates is good enough to beat Donald Trump.
While both businessmen are New Yorkers, their rise to the top has been very different. Trump can thank inherited wealth, property and reality TV powered by maniacal self-belief, but Bloomberg turned a $10 million payout after getting fired into a company worth an estimated $40 billion that has upturned the financial information industry.
His rise from Wall Street trader to technology and media magnate was powered by a slightly different sort of belief in his own exceptionalism: “I’m not the smartest guy in the room, but nobody’s going to outwork me,” he told the New York Times in 2017.
MANAGING EQUITIES AT BOILING VAULT
Born on Valentine’s Day 1942 to a dairy company accountant father, William, and housewife mother, Charlotte, the young Jewish Michael Bloomberg reportedly sold Christmas wreaths for summer camp.
After studying at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Harvard Business School, he got a job at the risk-taking bond trader Salomon Brothers, where he worked furiously hard, reportedly stripping down to his underwear to count bond certificates in a boiling hot bank vault.
Bloomberg moved to the equities desk and was made partner in 1972 before being forced into an IT division amid an internal power struggle. It was seen as a demotion – but what he learnt there sowed the seeds for his fortune. Fired two years later, in 1981, he spied an opportunity in selling financial information such as stock and bond valuations, as well as the software to analyse them.
RIVAL TO REUTERS
Years before the internet and in the middle of a recession, he took his $10 million severance
pay and set up Innovative Market Systems, which developed computer terminals to view and analyse the data, selling them to clients such as investment bankers. Using better data and slicker systems than rivals such as Reuters, the renamed Bloomberg grew rapidly and its terminals are now an essential part of the global financial services machine, transforming the industry.
There are now more than 350,000 subscribers who each pay about $24,000 a year — a tax on Wall Street of sorts, long before Bloomberg has the keys to the White House. Bloomberg started branching into news in 1990 to give terminal subscribers extra information — with its ever-ambitious founder keen to make it the “world’s most influential source of news”.
A PRIVATE AFFAIR
Still privately held, Bloomberg does not disclose numbers. However, the founder bought back Merrill Lynch’s 20 per cent stake for $4.5 billion in 2008 – suggesting it was then valued at about $40 billion. He owns 90 per cent of the company, and Forbes ranks him as the eighthrichest American, worth more than $50 billion.
It has not come without challenges. Bloomberg alienated clients in 2013 when it emerged its journalists had regularly accessed details about terminal subscribers, such as what functions they had used, to help them get stories. The major breach of ethics - described by the Bank of England as “reprehensible” — pushed some towards a rival service called Symphony. Bloomberg is also under growing threat from cost cutting across the finance industry and the rapid pace of change in technology.
A FORTUNE TO BANKROLL CAMPAIGN
Whether its founder will be around to meet those challenges remains to be seen. The fortune he made from the business helped him launch his $74 million first New York City mayoral campaign in 2001. That same fortune will now help bankroll his first bid for presidency, where he wants to provide more affordable medical care and cut pollution from fossil fuels. Asked in 2017 what he would have done differently, Bloomberg gave a typically confident response: “Given the way things turned out, nothing.”
Will he say the same by this time next year?