1981 -- Michael Bloomberg had given fifteen years of his young life to Salomon Brothers, the only employer he had ever really had after finishing his MBA at Harvard. He had enjoyed a meteoric career with the financial services company, making partner at the age of 31 after proving himself to be one of the best equity block traders in the company. But in 1979, Salomon Brothers suddenly moved him from the trading floor -- where all the action was -- to systems development, where he found himself tucked away behind the scenes with computer nerds. He wondered why anyone would put him in charge of the office computers, since he knew absolutely nothing about them. But Bloomberg knew the answer to that question -- he was being nudged into oblivion. Sure enough, when Salomon was acquired by Philbro two years later, Bloomberg was squeezed out of his job along with six other partners who were cut loose. He received $10 million for his partnership interest from the company as he was shown the door, but he was unwanted and out of work nevertheless, having crash-landed in the midst of a huge recession that only added more fog to the road ahead.
2008 -- With a net worth of more than $16 billion, Michael Bloomberg ranked as the eighth wealthiest American and was the richest and most powerful person in New York City, where he had served as mayor since his election in 2001. His company, Bloomberg L.P., had become not merely a dominant presence on Wall Street -- having developed computer information systems for trading firms -- but had also become a major news provider, with a wire service as well as cable television and news radio channels devoted to coverage of the marketplace. The company also owns a popular market news website as well as a variety of other multimedia information platforms that have a global reach. Bloomberg himself owns 80 percent of the company, so he bears most of the risks and rewards for each of his ventures. He also has emerged as one of the most generous philanthropists of his generation. Over the years, Bloomberg has given more than $300 million to Johns Hopkins University (his alma mater) and routinely gives away between $150-200 million a year to a variety of foundations and causes, including efforts to control tobacco consumption in developing countries.
It goes without saying that $10 million is a lot of money. With his partner's share from the sale of Salomon Brothers, Michael Bloomberg could have sat back and eased into a life of comfort, far from the hectic pace of Wall Street. Instead, he went out and bought his wife a sable coat, telling her that "Job or no job, we are still players." The next morning, he sat down at 7 a.m. and began drawing up plans for a new business venture. Years later, Bloomberg explained that "nobody offered me a job and I was too pig-headed to go look for one, so starting a business was a relatively simple idea." Though he had known nothing about computers when he was shoved into the systems department, he drew on his experiences there to imagine a new computer system for traders, one that would provide live data about the market and provide information about publicly traded securities, particularly bonds, in a way that allowed brokers to compare them. With some former colleagues from Salomon Brothers, Bloomberg put together a team and began working on a project to build just such a machine. He approached Merrill Lynch and offered them the opportunity to invest in the project and become its first customer. When Merrill Lynch purchased 30 percent of his new company, Bloomberg had more than enough capital to get up and running. Within six months, the new trading computer system was complete, and orders for "The Bloomberg" began pouring in.