Shares, 28th October 1999
Product Description
"Lots of entrepreneurs make money. Lots of entrepreneurs who make money write books. Few of those books make you glad they did. This one does."
—The New York Times Book Review
"A classic tale of a nimble, customer–focused, entrepreneurial David outsmarting bureaucratic, ossified, corporate Goliaths."
—Business Week
"Entertaining, engaging, and informative, Bloomberg by Bloomberg is packed with great advice about how to start a lean, hungry company–and how to keep it that way."
—Bryan Burrough, coauthor, Barbarians at the Gate
Brash, aggressive, and supremely self–confident, Michael Bloomberg, the visionary leader of the world′s fastest–growing media empire, has been hailed as the new standard for what it takes to win in the Information Age. Dismissed from Salomon Brothers in 1981, Bloomberg immediately took his money and acerbic personality and started Bloomberg L.P. Bolstered by a $30 million investment from Merrill Lynch, the company and the man have been sprinting ahead of the pack ever since. Only twenty years after founding, he′s at the top of his industry. And on June 5, 2001, he added mayoral candidate for New York City to his list of accomplishments and aspirations. If elected, powerhouse Michael Bloomberg will bring his own brand of leadership–and personal style–to the city that never sleeps.
From the Back Cover
"A classic tale of a nimble, customer–focused, entrepreneurial David outsmarting bureaucratic, ossified, corporate Goliaths."
—Business Week
"Michael Bloomberg is the most creative media entrepreneur of our time and, with Bill Gates, perhaps the most successful."
—Rupert Murdoch, Chairman & Chief Executive, News Corporation
"Entertaining, engaging, and informative, Bloomberg by Bloomberg is packed with great advice about how to start a lean, hungry company–and how to keep it that way."
—Bryan Burrough, coauthor, Barbarians at the Gate
"The man with Wall Street′s best known generic name has written an autobiography that keeps you up late to finish. The book is full of wonderful insights about Wall Street and about starting and growing a new business."
—Julian H. Robertson Jr., Chairman, Tiger Management LLC
"This is the best insight yet on how one man shook up the entire financial information industry."
—Richard Branson, Chairman, Virgin Group of Companies
All author′s royalties from Bloomberg by Bloomberg are donated to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
About the Author
MATTHEW WINKLER, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, is founder and Editor in Chief of Bloomberg News.
Excerpted from Bloomberg by Bloomberg by Bloomberg. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Thrill of Getting Fired:
Tarrytown 1981
So there I was, thirty-nine years old and essentially hearing, "Here's $10 million; you're history." One summer morning, John Gutfreund, managing partner of Wall Street's hottest firm, and Henry Kaufman, then the world's most influential economist, told me my life at Salomon Brothers was finished.
"Time for you to leave, " said John.
On Saturday, August 1, 1981, I was terminated from the only fulltime job I'd ever known and from the high-pressure life I loved. This, after fifteen years of twelve-hour days and six-day weeks.
Out!
For a decade and a half, I'd been an integral part of the country's most successful securities trading firm, even of Wall Street itself. Not just in my head. If my press was to be believed, in everyone's. Suddenly, though, needed no longer. I was a general partner. An owner rather than an employee. Nevertheless:
Fired!
I wasn't going to know what was happening, wasn't going to be making decisions, wasn't going to share in "my" company's profits and losses, wasn't going to be part of it at all. "We" had become "them and me."
"What do you think about us selling the company?" asked Henry.
"If I'm being thrown out, better now than later," I replied.
Of course, there was the $10 million I was getting. America's a wonderful country.
* * *
The Salomon Brothers Executive Committee had decided to merge the seventy-one-year-old partnership with a publicly held commodities trading firm, Phibro Corporation (previously part of Engelhard Minerals and Chemicals). We found this out on a hot, summer Friday night at a hastily called, "mandatory attendance, utmost-secrecy required," mysterious partners' meeting at the Tarrytown Conference Center, the former New York estate of society hostess Mary Duke Biddle. Security guards surrounded the complex, checking in each participant as he arrived. (Unfortunately, security missed seeing a Fortune magazine photographer who'd been tipped off and was hiding in a tree. So much for confidentiality!) For sixty-three of us, it was our last meeting as Salomon partners and the occasion when Gutfreund and Kaufman told me my time at Salomon Brothers was over.
We got together in a big conference room before dinner. Expensive lawyers and accountants, being paid at overtime rates, hovered to the side. Exchanging furtive glances, they oozed a nervousness, perhaps in fear that some prewritten script would go awry. Tables and chairs were arranged in rows with the Executive Committee seated in front, facing "the troops." At each partner's seat was a dark gray personalized leather folder. I sat at my assigned place and, though we had been told to wait, like everyone else I immediately opened the book in front of me. The first enclosures were financial projections for our company after a proposed merger with Phibro, this almost unknown oil, metals, and agricultural commodities dealer. Pro forma income statements, balance sheets, legal documents, and other corporate gibberish were attached. But the second presentation in the book was infinitely more interesting: the effect of the deal on me as an individual. It meant millions of dollars in my pocket!
The pointless speeches went on and on. The Executive Committee was determined to sell the assets of the Salomon partnership. This transaction was a foregone conclusion: The process, a jury trial parody, where witnesses saw the accused pull the trigger, no mitigating circumstances are entered as evidence, and the judge instructs the jurors to deliberate. Everybody walks into the jury room and the foreman asks, "Did he do it?"
Twelve people instantaneously answer, "Guilty."
"Let's go back."
"We can't. We've got to give the accused some consideration. Let's sit around and talk for an hour."
So at Tarrytown we talked for sixty minutes. We were solemn. We were serious. Some asked about differences in corporate culture, others about earnings potential, a few about management structure and duplication of staff functions.
Irrelevant! The Executive Committee wanted this merger and could have voted it through on its own. Yes, we were presented with a fait accompli. But, make no mistake. There was 100 percent approval from the rest of the general partners. Nobody in that meeting gave a moment's thought to rejecting the sale, including me. It was such a lucrative deal for us, as owners.
By the time we sat down to eat, everything was said and done. We were all as serious and businesslike as we possibly could be while trying to stifle the enormous grins on our faces. Everybody attending this meeting was now wealthy beyond his dreams. Previously, partners' money had just been numbers in a capital account ledger book, "funny money." We could give it to charity, or retire, and wait another ten years to get at it. Other than that (and 5 percent interest paid out to us yearly), our fortune was only on paper. That was then. But this was now. All of a sudden, it was real. And ours. In our pockets. In cash!
We were told not to tell anyone until the public announcement the coming Monday. Nobody, inside the company or outside, had known that a sale was even being considered. (Still, my friend and partner Bob Salomon guessed, the day before, that whatever was brewing involved Phibro Corp. He showed me the company's symbol on his stock monitor before we drove to the Tarrytown meeting. Smarter than the rest of us!) The Executive Committee hadn't told the retired limited partners. Not even Billy Salomon, the grand, old man of the company. He was informed personally in a much criticized surprise helicopter visit to his Southampton summer home two days later.
Strict instructions to the contrary notwithstanding, some partners did telephone their wives that Friday night. I thought it was nonsensical to make your spouse a possible leak suspect. What difference would it make if she didn't know for an extra day? Others didn't share my view. One partner called his wife while she was at their country club. She ran back into
