He was born on Valentine’s Day in 1942. He served as New York City’s mayor for three consecutive terms. He’s the co-founder and majority owner of an eponymous financial data and media company. And he’s a self-made multi-billionaire born to a middle-class family in Boston. Who is he? Michael Rubens Bloomberg – the infamous 80-year-old businessman and philanthropist, whose net worth is the tens of billions.
According to the Forbes 400 list, he is currently the 10th richest American alive. But just how wealthy is he nowadays and how did he make his billions? That’s what we’re going to discuss today. Read on to discover Michael Bloomberg’s net worth.
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Michael Bloomberg’s Background
Unlike many of the world’s wealthiest people, Michael Bloomberg wasn’t born into riches. His father was a Polish immigrant who worked as a bookkeeper, and his mother was a secretary.
No, Bloomberg’s fortune is self-made – derived from a lifelong love of technology that led him to an electrical engineering degree at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and then to Harvard University, where he earned his MBA.
Two years later, in 1966, he took an entry-level job at the Salomon Brothers investment bank, one of the largest on Wall Street at the time. He literally started at the bottom, working in his underwear in the sweltering heat of the bank’s un-air-conditioned vaults. Every day, they counted bond and stock certificates worth billions of dollars that were carried to banks as collateral for overnight loans. His salary at the time was $9,000 a year, which doesn’t sound like much but is equivalent to $78,906 in today’s money.
Bloomberg quickly rose up the ranks, becoming a bond trader, and was made a partner in 1972. Fast forward to 1976, he was a general partner at the firm and head of equity trading and sales. He worked six days per week, 12 hours each day.
In 1979, Bloomberg was asked to head the emerging computer systems area.
However, a few years later, in 1981, Salomon Brothers merged with Philbro, a public commodity trading firm, becoming Philbro-Salomon. He was asked to leave – with a $10 million severance package for his trouble.
Despite the setback, this is when his road to riches really began.
Bloomberg’s Road to Riches
Aged 39 and with $10 million in his back pocket – over $32.3 million in today’s money – Bloomberg decided to establish his own company in the Information Technology industry. Calling it Innovative Market Systems (IMS), he set out to build a computer terminal that’d help traders keep track of the U.S. Treasury bond market in real time, making buying and selling bonds more efficient.
Investing $4 million of his own money, he pulled it off. The terminal was called the Market Master, and in 1982, just a year after opening for business, Bloomberg got his first customer. A certain Merrill Lynch ordered 22 monitors and, as a bonus, invested $30 million in exchange for 30% of the company. Later, in 1989, he bought back the stake for $200 million, valuing the firm at $2 billion.
Fun fact: it’s said that Bloomberg later installed 22 fish tanks in the New York office to commemorate that initial purchase.
All this happened right when stock exchanges started digitizing, which helps explain the company’s meteoric success in the 1980s.
Just five years after selling those initial monitors, by which time IMS had been renamed Bloomberg L.P., the company sold its 5000th monitor. By 1999, a whopping 100,000 Bloomberg terminals were in operation worldwide.
As this rapid growth continued, Bloomberg branched out into new spaces, creating things like Bloomberg Business News and Bloomberg TV, with each addition establishing new income streams and adding to the company’s overall profitability.
Today, according to its website, the company has 176 offices in 69 countries and employs over 21,000 people. It generated $12.5 billion in revenue in 2023 – up from $12.2 billion last year – making it the 33rd largest private company in the United States.
Michael Bloomberg’s Current Net Worth
Bloomberg accepted a $1 annual salary when he became the mayor of New York City (NYC) in 2002. But don’t feel too sorry for him. He’s also the majority owner of the company he founded over three decades ago, boasting an enviable 88% stake in Bloomberg L.P.
So how wealthy does that make him? According to Forbes, Michael Bloomberg’s net worth is currently $106.2 billion, making him the 10th richest person in America and the 12th richest person worldwide.
Bloomberg’s famous for more than his net worth, though. He’s also notorious for philanthropy. Having committed to giving the majority of his wealth away via the Giving Pledge, he’s contributed to many good causes in his time – most notably to his undergraduate alma mater, Johns Hopkins University.
In 2018, for example, he pledged a staggering $1.8 billion to JHU, which brought the total amount he’s donated to the institution up to $3.35 billion. Other charities and foundations that have benefited from his philanthropy include Comic Relief, the Los Angeles Mission, and the Joyful Heart Foundation, alongside dozens more.
Now You Know Michael Bloomberg’s Net Worth
Michael Bloomberg is a business mogul, celebrated philanthropist, and one of the longest-running mayors in NYC’s history. We hope this article has shed light on his background and revealed how, over the last five decades, he went from relatively humble beginnings to becoming one of the wealthiest people on the planet.
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Danny Newman is a digital nomad, blogger, and content writer from the UK. A passionate traveler with a perpetual itch in his feet, he’s always on the hunt for the next big adventure.