The name Bloomberg is a worldwide brand that
could refer to a number of things…a cable channel, a radio network, a news
service, a magazine, or a 75-year-old former mayor of New York who founded the
Bloomberg Financial media empire and flirted with running for president.
According to Forbes Magazine, Michael Bloomberg is the 8th richest man in the
world, and one of a growing number of extremely wealthy people who plan to give
most of their money away…releasing a torrent of private philanthropy that is
already having an impact on the country.
“Oh,
it’s more money than anybody could possibly spend on themselves. The issue is
what can ya do with it?” Mike Bloomberg
Of that group, Michael Bloomberg is one of the
most interesting and straight forward, and he agreed to talk to us about how he
came to accumulate $47 billion dollars…and what he hopes to accomplish by giving
it away.
Michael Bloomberg: Oh, it’s more money than
anybody could possibly spend on themselves. The issue is what can ya do with it?
You can’t take it with ya, although I have a cartoon at home of a guy on his
death bed in a hospital with the rails around and his family looking down like
vultures. And he looks up and he says, “I know I can’t take it with me, but I
can take the access code.”
At 75, “Mike” Bloomberg, as he likes to be
called, is a long way from retirement. Most days you’ll find him in the gleaming
Oz-like tower that bears his company’s name....a high-energy, egalitarian work
place, at the crossroads of media, information technology and capitalism.
Steve Kroft: This is an incredible building,
office building. It looks like, I don’t know what it looks like.
Michael Bloomberg: What I’m trying to do is to
create excitement. So people say, “My goodness, what’s going on here? There’s
something different about this company.” The employees, you want them to get
psyched. And it’s a chance to meet each other. My job is to get people to work
together.
With free food and no offices, even for
Bloomberg, this might be considered one of the world’s great corporate
headquarters…if it weren’t for the fact that Bloomberg L.P. is not a
corporation, it’s a limited partnership, a private company….and 85 percent of
all of this and a lot more belongs to Mike Bloomberg.
Steve Kroft: Is this is a technology company? Is
it an information company?
Michael Bloomberg: Yes and yes. We try to get
information people need, store it, present it, and let you use it.
When Bloomberg started out as clerk on the Wall
Street trading desk of Salomon Brothers in 1966 he thought there must be a
better way to get up to the minute financial data than combing through the Wall
Street Journal. He spent 15 years trying to convince his partners at Salomon
that computers could be the answer. When they fired him in 1981, he used his $10
million severance to hire three young engineers and launch his startup.
Michael Bloomberg: When I started the company,
it was before PCs were invented. I know you don’t think there was a day. We
literally built our own. And the Internet hadn’t been invented. So we created
our own. We’d rent a telephone line and then had a little device that let you
branch out when you got to Chicago or wherever.
“I
tend to be reasonably blunt, maybe a little bit too much. But I just-- I always
respected people that tell the truth. And I’ve always wanted people to tell me
the truth.” Mike Bloomberg
Ever since then Mike Bloomberg has pretty much
done things the way he wants to.
Michael Bloomberg: Where else have you seen a
curved escalator? We needed a curved one. It fit into the space, and the
architect said, “Doesn’t exist.” And I said, “You go to Japan, you’ll find a
curved one.” And they did of course.
Bloomberg has a degree in electrical engineering
from Johns Hopkins University, and it is that discipline of an engineer that
defines his character and personality: detached, analytical, pragmatic.
Steve Kroft: These are some of the words that
people have used to describe you. Tell me…
Michael Bloomberg: Are these all my relatives,
or?
Steve Kroft: No, no, no. No. I don’t think so.
Well, maybe.
Michael Bloomberg: Depends whether it’s good or
bad.
Michael Bloomberg: I tend to be reasonably
blunt, maybe a little bit too much. But I just-- I always respected people that
tell the truth. And I’ve always wanted people to tell me the truth.
Steve Kroft: Self-confident.
Michael Bloomberg: Reasonably self-confident.
Been successful. Don’t think that-- I’m—I’d-- I’m infallible. Will always make
mistakes.
Steve Kroft: Arrogant. You’ve certainly heard
people say that.
Michael Bloomberg: Um, I suppose I come across
that way sometimes. But my mother would have told me, “Don’t.”
Even his late mother would probably forgive him
for the occasional lapse of humility given the size and the scope of the
Bloomberg empire. Nearly 20,000 employees in 192 locations around the world,
gathering, writing, transmitting, and analyzing information that will move
markets.
Michael Bloomberg: These people are doing
one-minute radio business updates for a hundred different radio stations around
the country.
But the real money and most of the profits come
from a mysterious piece of equipment known as the Bloomberg Terminal that sits
on the desks of titans and traders all over the world.
Michael Bloomberg: Sound, pictures, graphics,
tabular data. Different ways to look at the markets.
It’s really a customized keyboard and closely
guarded proprietary software, linked to a private computer network, that
provides a volume of data that’s unavailable anywhere else. Live streams from
300 stock exchanges, curated tweets, the exact location of oil tankers around
the world. The kind of stuff 325,000 professionals pay $25,000 to rent for one
year. If you do the math it adds up to about $8 billion.
Michael Bloomberg: But let’s say you want to
look at a stock, General Motors, for example.
After using his fingerprint to log onto his
account, Bloomberg gave us a peek behind the curtain.
Michael Bloomberg: On the left are all of the
companies that sell parts and to General Motors. And on the right are all of the
companies that buy General Motors output. Generally cars. The different indices
that General Motors stock is in. Here are the other companies that compete with
them. Here are the big holders of their stock, analysts that follow it, who’s on
the board, who works in the company.
Steve Kroft: Why has nobody else done
this?
Michael Bloomberg: For an individual company to
do it, it’s probably too expensive, unless it’s your business. This is our
business.
Bloomberg has not only left his mark on Wall
Street. He has left it on New York City. He took us up in a company helicopter
he was piloting to have a look.
Michael
Bloomberg: LaGuardia, helicopter number six Mike Victor.
The thing he likes best about flying, he said,
is if you don’t follow the rules you die.
By 2001, Bloomberg was already worth $five
billion and looking for a new challenge…he wanted to run something big like the
UN or the World Bank. He settled on New York City, taking leave from his job and
spending a quarter of a billion dollars of his own money to get himself elected
mayor three times.
Michael Bloomberg: Here is the new World Trade
Center. You can see the big tall building and others.
Steve Kroft: Right.
The first time he was elected was just two
months after 9/11…he managed the resurrection from the rubble.
Michael Bloomberg: Right through there you can
see the Oculus, which is this big shopping thing. This whole part of Manhattan
before was sort of desolate after 9/11, we now have 25 hotels. Now it’s a
bustling residential community as well.
He saw the city through the economic crisis of
2008…and while he was mayor development and construction boomed and the crime
rate dropped.
Michael Bloomberg: Hudson Yards, which is this
big development. Phenomenally successful development. Created an enormous amount
of jobs, enormous amount of new office space.
He was sometimes ridiculed for his public health
war on smoking, trans fats and soft drinks…but he points out life expectancy of
New Yorkers increased by three years while he was in office.
Steve Kroft: Did you enjoy your time as
mayor?
Michael Bloomberg: Loved every minute of it.
It’s a wonderful job. The challenges are enormous, but you have a great
opportunity to make a difference.
He was successful enough in the job to twice
consider running for president, but he was never able to find a solid
constituency in either party. Last year, he thought about running as an
Independent and was prepared to spend a billion dollars of his fortune to get
elected, aides say. He’d even decided on Retired Admiral Mike Mullen as a
running mate.
Steve Kroft: And you came close. You looked at
it. But you didn’t pull the trigger.
Michael Bloomberg: If I thought we could win, or
had a reasonable chance, I would have done it. It would be totally
unlikely, very unlikely that an Independent could win. And in my case, I was
mayor for a long time. People know where I stand. I couldn’t pretend to be
something I’m not. For the Republicans, I’m pro-choice, pro-gay rights,
pro-immigration. That’s a good start there. You’ll never get their nomination.
On the Democratic side, I believe in teacher evaluation. The big banks, we need
to help them rather than just keep trying to tear them down. Those are not
particularly things that will help you get the nomination.
He campaigned hard against Donald Trump, his New
York rival in the general election, calling him a con man (someone who uses
dishonest or illegal methods to trick people into giving them money) at the
Democratic convention in Philadelphia.
Michael
Bloomberg: I’m a New Yorker, and I know a con when I see one!
Steve Kroft: Have you spoken to Trump since he’s
in the White House?
Michael Bloomberg: Yes, once I called him and
congratulated him. We joked about my speech in Philadelphia. And before he
finished the conversation, he gave me his personal phone number, his cell phone.
I haven’t called him, so I don’t know if-- whether he’d answer it now. But--
he’s-- I hope he does a good job.
Steve Kroft: You’re not gonna run for office
again?
Michael Bloomberg: Well, I’m 75 years old. It’d
be an age issue, I suppose. I’ve got plenty of things to do. And maybe I’ll run
for president of my block association, but not much more than that.
Bloomberg remains incredibly influential and was
received as a world leader when he traveled abroad last month for meetings on
climate change. He is still trying to make a difference and using his incredible
wealth to do it.
Almost all of his fortune will end up with his
charitable foundation. He’s already given away more than $5 billion to causes
that often dovetail with his political interests.
Steve Kroft: There is now a fairly crowded field
out there of people who are incredibly wealthy that are giving money to advance
their own political agendas.
Michael Bloomberg: Well, if they-- if the
projects—
Steve Kroft: The Koch brothers, for one. Or
George Soros.
Michael Bloomberg: I know George Soros and I
know the Koch brothers. And, while I don’t agree with any of those three on a
lotta things, I think it’s fair to say, ‘cause I know them reasonably well, they
really believe and they really are trying to do something. They really want to
change the world. You, for example, in the Northeast couldn’t get treated for
cancer at any major university or hospital without being in a Koch cancer
building. They’ve given an enormous amount of money. And if you get cancer, you
should start saying thank you to the Kochs.
To some it’s just another example of the super
wealthy having a disproportionate influence on political debate and public
opinion. Bloomberg has spent a billion dollars trying to get people to quit
smoking, $135 million to battle the NRA on gun control, and a $100 million to
assist the Sierra Club and its lawyers in shutting down more than 250 coal fired
plants.
Steve Kroft: You’re not out of the political
arena altogether. You’re, you’re very active in a number of issues, coal and the
environment being one of them right now--
Michael Bloomberg: Yeah. Coal is a very
dirty fuel. It’s been killing people. Around the world, people are saying,
“No more coal.”
In new a book with Carl Pope…Bloomberg writes,
“I don’t have much sympathy for industries whose products leave behind a trail
of diseased and dead bodies.” He’s more sympathetic to the miners.
Michael Bloomberg: Coalminers have lost their
jobs. It’s very tragic, and we have to do something about it. Technology’s come
in. Technology has replaced most of these coalminers. They didn’t lose their
jobs for any reason other than it was automated. And now we have a bunch of
people who have becau-- no fault of their own, they’ve lost their job. Those
jobs don’t exist anymore. Somebody said-- to promise that coal jobs are coming
back is like promising the workers who used to work at Eastman Kodak that film
is gonna come back. Not likely to happen.
Steve Kroft: There are people out there would
say, “Look, is it Mike Bloomberg’s job to give the Sierra Club $100 million to
go out and try and--”
Michael Bloomberg: It’s not my job. I
wanted--
Steve Kroft: --”250-- coal plants?”
Michael Bloomberg: Well, keep in mind, Mike
Bloomberg’s kids and grandkids are breathing that air just like the coalminers’
families are breathing that air. And the coalminers are the ones that have the
conflict. They want their jobs, I understand that. They need to be able to feed
their families. They also have to worry about their health and the health of
their families.
Steve Kroft: Are you giving money to try and
find these coal-- to try and reeducate and give them new skills?
Michael Bloomberg: We’re certainly working on
trying to find ways to create jobs, not just for them. But technology, which is
what cost the coalminers their jobs, not the Sierra Club incidentally. Long
before the Sierra Club started this, coalmining jobs went from 250,000 in the
country to 70,000 in the country.
Bloomberg sees personal philanthropy in the
tradition of Carnegie, the Rockefellers and the Mellons… not as a threat to
democracy, but as a way to do important things that are not politically
feasible. And as always, Mike Bloomberg trusts his judgment.
Steve Kroft: Is there anything you want that you
don’t have?
Michael Bloomberg: I like what I see when I look
in the mirror. If I get sentimental, I look and say, “Uh. It’s a bad day. They
beat up on me,” this, that, and the other thing. But ya know? We’ve spent one
billion trying to convince people to not smoke. It’s been phenomenally
successful. We’ve probably saved millions of lives. There aren’t many people
that have done that. So, you know, when I get to heaven, I’m not sure I’m gonna
stand for an interview. I’m going right in.
