Bloomberg, Michael Rubens

Bloomberg, Michael Rubens, 1942–, American businessman and politician, mayor of New York City (2002–), b. Boston, Mass. Bloomberg studied at Johns Hopkins Univ. (B.S., 1964) and Harvard Business School (M.B.A., 1966). Rising quickly in the world of finance, he became a partner at Salomon Brothers, but in 1981, after a merger, he was fired. Anticipating growing needs for business information, he used his $10 million severance to start a financial data and communications company, Bloomberg L.P. The company grew rapidly into a huge multifaceted enterprise that provides accurate real-time financial and business data as well as historical data and analysis and electronic communications and produces television and radio programs. Bloomberg himself became a multibillionaire. Long a Democrat, he ran in 2001 for New York mayor as a Republican, spending record-breaking amounts of his own money, and was elected to succeed Rudolph Giuliani. He was reelected in 2005. In 2007 he quit the Republican party, becoming an independent.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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