Michael Bloomberg

Current Company

Bloomberg LP — Founder & CEO

From Fired to Financial Data Monopoly

Michael Bloomberg was fired from Salomon Brothers in 1981 with a $10 million severance package. Rather than retire, he founded Innovative Market Systems with four colleagues, building a computer terminal that provided Wall Street traders with real-time bond pricing, analytics, and news in a single integrated system. The Bloomberg Terminal — as it became known — solved a problem that every trading desk had: information was scattered across multiple systems, delayed, and difficult to analyze.

By the 1990s, the Bloomberg Terminal was ubiquitous on Wall Street, and Bloomberg LP had expanded into news, television, radio, and digital media. The terminal's subscription model — roughly $25,000 per user per year — generated enormous recurring revenue. Bloomberg retained 88% ownership of the company, making him one of the wealthiest self-made billionaires in history without ever taking the company public.

Three Terms, Then Philanthropy at Global Scale

Bloomberg served three terms as Mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, applying a data-driven management style to municipal government. His administration's signature initiatives included a smoking ban in bars and restaurants, trans fat restrictions, calorie labeling on menus, and the development of the Hudson Yards and Brooklyn waterfront. Critics called him a nanny-state technocrat; supporters credited him with making New York safer, healthier, and more prosperous.

After leaving office, Bloomberg turned his attention to philanthropy at a global scale. Bloomberg Philanthropies has given away over $17 billion, with major initiatives in public health (anti-smoking campaigns in developing countries), climate change (the Beyond Carbon campaign to close coal plants), gun safety, and education. His giving dwarfs that of most philanthropists in both scale and specificity — Bloomberg funds interventions that can be measured, and he kills programs that don't show results.