Michael Bloomberg

Michael Bloomberg attended Johns Hopkins University and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. He built a career at Salomon Brothers, rising to partner, but was terminated in 1981 when Salomon Brothers was acquired by Phibro Corporation. Using his $10 million severance, he founded Innovative Market Systems — later renamed Bloomberg LP — with the vision of providing sophisticated financial data analysis tools to the securities industry. The Bloomberg Terminal, launched in 1982 in partnership with Merrill Lynch, provided an integrated system for market data, analytics, news, and electronic trading. Its ability to combine real-time data, historical analysis, and trading functionality in a single terminal proved transformative for financial professionals. Today over 325,000 professionals use Bloomberg terminals, generating approximately $10 billion in annual subscription revenue. Bloomberg LP has expanded into news media, television, radio, and digital content — making Bloomberg News one of the world's most important financial news organisations. Bloomberg served as Mayor of New York City for three terms (2002-2013), applying business management principles to city government. He has been an extraordinarily generous philanthropist, having donated over $14 billion to causes including public health, arts, education, and climate change.