Bloomberg L.P. - History, Services and Products

History, Services and Products

In 1981, Salomon Brothers was acquired, and Michael Bloomberg, a general partner, was given a $10 million partnership settlement. Using this money, Bloomberg went on to set up a company named Innovative Market Systems. In 1982, Merrill Lynch became the new company's first customer, installing 22 Market Master terminals and investing $30 million in the company. In 1986, the company was renamed Bloomberg L.P. and by 1988, 5000 terminals had been installed. Within a few years, ancillary products including Bloomberg Tradebook (a trading platform), the Bloomberg Messaging Service, and the Bloomberg newswire were launched.

In addition to its financial services offerings, Bloomberg launched its news services division in 1990. Bloomberg Television (originally known as Bloomberg Business News) has over 2,000 employees and 145 bureaus around the world, producing more than 5,000 stories daily. It now provides information to approximately 350 newspapers and magazines worldwide, including The Economist, The New York Times and USA Today.

To run for the position of Mayor of New York against Democrat Mark Green in 2001, Mike Bloomberg gave up his position of CEO at Bloomberg and appointed Lex Fenwick as CEO in his stead. Daniel Doctoroff, former deputy mayor in the Bloomberg administration, now serves as president. Peter Grauer is the chairman. In 2008, Fenwick became the CEO of Bloomberg Ventures, a new venture capital division.

In September 2007, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of more than 80 female employees, who argue Bloomberg L.P. engaged in a pattern of discrimination against pregnant women who took maternity leave. The suit alleges that 'Michael Bloomberg is responsible for the creation of the systemic, top-down culture of discrimination' at the company. A Bloomberg L.P. spokeswoman said: 'We are confident that once all the facts come out they will demonstrate that the claims have no merit.'

Bloomberg News was the subject of an investigative feature by Vanity Fair in December 2008.

In 2009, Bloomberg acquired BusinessWeek, a consumer oriented business magazine and Web property, from McGraw-Hill; and New Energy Finance, now called Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a data company focused on energy investment and carbon markets research based in the U.K. The same year, The New York Times covered Bloomberg's growth and aspirations in a full-length media section feature.

Bloomberg Professional Service and Gerson Lehrman Group issued a press release on July 8, 2010, indicating the former's clients would be given exclusive access to 50,000+ GLG Council Member business experts globally.

On September 30, 2011, Bloomberg L.P. completed its acquisition of Bureau of National Affairs for About $990 million.

In May 2012, Bloomberg acquired Dublin-based software provider PolarLake and is launching a new enterprise data management (EDM) service to help companies acquire, manage and distribute data across their organizations.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance is a specialist provider of financial information and research to the renewable energy technology sector and its investors worldwide.