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Michael Bloomberg Age, Wife, Children, Family, Biography & More

Michael Bloomberg

Bio/Wiki
Full NameMichael Rubens Bloomberg
NicknameMike [1]VANITY FAIR
Profession(s)• Businessman
• Politician
• Author
Physical Stats & More
Height [2]The New York Timesin centimeters- 170 cm
in meters- 1.70 m
in feet inches- 5’ 7”
Michael Bloomberg Height
Eye ColorHazel Green
Hair ColorGray
Politics
Political Party• Democratic (before 2001; 2018-present)
Democratic Party Logo
• Independent (2007-2018)
• Republican (2001-2007)
Republican Party Logo
Political Journey• In 2001, he quit the membership of the Democratic Party and joined the Republican Party.
• On January 1, 2002, Bloomberg assumed office as the 108th Mayor of New York City and was re-elected in 2005 and again in 2009.
• In 2007, he quit the membership of the Republican Party and became independent.
• Although there were rumors of him contesting for the 2010 gubernatorial election, he did not run.
• Amid rumors of his run for the 2012 presidential elections, Bloomberg ruled out a run for the presidency in a December 2010 appearance on Meet the Press, and in November 2012, he penned an op-ed officially endorsing Barack Obama for president.
• During the 2016 presidential campaign, it was again speculated that Bloomberg would run for the presidency, and it was the first time that he had officially confirmed he was considering a run. Eventually, he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.
• In October 2018, he announced that he had re-registered as a Democrat.
• On March 5, 2019, he announced that he would not run for president in 2020. However, he officially started his campaign on November 24, 2019.
Biggest RivalDonald Trump
Awards, Honors, Achievements • In 2003, he received the "Award for Distinguished Leadership in Global Capital Markets" from the Yale School of Management.
• In 2007, he was awarded an honorary degree in Public Service from Tufts University.
• Bloomberg was named the 39th most influential person in the world in the 2007 and 2008 Time 100.
• In 2008, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Pennsylvania.
• In 2009, Bloomberg received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Fordham University.
• In 2010, he received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official.
• In 2014, Bloomberg received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Harvard University.
• On October 6, 2014, Queen Elizabeth II awarded Bloomberg as the Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Michael Bloomberg being awarded with Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire
• In 2019, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws degree from Washington University in St. Louis.
Personal Life
Date of BirthFebruary 14, 1942
Age (as of 2021)79 Years
BirthplaceSt. Elizabeth's Hospital, in Brighton, a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Zodiac signAquarius
SignatureMichael R Bloomberg Signature
NationalityAmerican
HometownMedford, Massachusetts, United States
SchoolHe attended public schools and Hebrew schools in the Boston suburb of Medford, Massachusetts. [3]The New Yorker
College/University• Johns Hopkins University
• Harvard Business School
Educational Qualification(s)• Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1964
• Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1966
ReligionJewish [4]The Times of Israel
Ethnicity/RaceAmerican Jews [5]Forward
Food HabitNon-Vegetarian [6]cntraveler.com
AddressBloomberg lives at his townhouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York.
HobbiesPracticing Philanthropy, Reading, Skiing
ControversyDuring his mayoral tenure, Bloomberg was criticized for his controversial support for “stop-and-frisk” policing; a policy that studies have shown disproportionately affected blacks and Latinos, and that a federal judge ruled unconstitutional in 2013. [7]The New York Times
Relationships & More
Sexual OrientationStraight
Marital StatusDivorced
Affairs/GirlfriendsDiana Taylor (former New York State Banking superintendent)
Michael Bloomberg With His Girlfriend Diana Taylor
Marriage DateYear 1975
Family
Wife/SpouseSusan Brown, a British national from Yorkshire (m. 1975; div. 1993)
Michael Bloomberg's Ex-Wife Susan Brown
Domestic PartnerDiana Taylor (former New York state banking superintendent)

Note: Diana has been living with Michael Bloomberg since 2000.
ChildrenSon- None
Daughter(s)- 2
• Emma Bloomberg (born 1979)
• Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983; professional equestrian)
Michael Bloomberg With His Daughters Emma (left) and Georgina (right)
ParentsFather- William Henry Bloomberg (1906–1963); an accountant for a dairy company
Michael R. Bloomberg (left) with his mother, Charlotte; father, William; and sister, Marjorie, in an undated photo
Mother- Charlotte (Rubens) Bloomberg (1909–2011)
Michael Bloomberg With His Mother Charlotte Bloomberg
SiblingsBrother- None
Sister- Marjorie Bloomberg Tiven (younger; Commissioner of the New York City Commission for the United Nations, Consular Corps and Protocol, since February 2002)
Michael Bloomberg's Sister Marjorie Bloomberg Tiven
Favorite Things
MoviesBlazing Saddles (1974), Animal House (1978), Bananas (1971), Sleeper (1973)
SportGolf
FoodBagels, Tuna Salads, PB&J, Pepperoni Pizza
Style Quotient
Car Collection• Audi R8 sports car [8]INSIDESOURCES
• Chevy Suburban SUV [9]INSIDESOURCES
Jet/Planes• Dassault Falcon (worth $30 million) [10]INSIDESOURCES
• Agusta SPA A109s helicopter (worth $4.5 million) [11]INSIDESOURCES
• AW109 helicopter [12]Wikipedia
Michael Bloomberg Walking out of His Helicopter
Assets/Properties• A multi-million-dollar mansion in Bermuda [13]INSIDESOURCES
Michael Bloomberg's House in Bermuda
• A five-story townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with an estimated 12,500 square feet of space [14]INSIDESOURCES
Michael Bloomberg Five Story Apartment in Manhattan
• Southampton ‘Ballyshear Estate’ (worth $20 Million) [15]HUFFPOST
Michael Bloomberg's Southampton home
• A historical property worth $25m located in London that once belonged to writer George Eliot [16]The Guardian

Note: Bloomberg has more than 15 properties in various countries around the world.
Money Factor
Salary (as the Mayor of New York City)He rejected the $2.7 million worth of salary to which he was entitled (accepting just $1 a year) [17]The New York Times
Net Worth (approx.)$57.1 Billion (as in January 2020) [18]Forbes

Michael Bloomberg

Some Lesser Known Facts About Michael Bloomberg

  • Does Michael Bloomberg smoke?: No (earlier, he had tried marijuana) [19]The New York Times
  • Does Michael Bloomberg drink alcohol?: Yes Michael Bloomberg Consuming Alcohol
  • Michael Bloomberg is one of the most recognized names in the United States. His name is stamped on more than seventy-three thousand computer terminals. His name is featured on television (Bloomberg Business News), on the radio (Bloomberg News Radio), in magazines (Bloomberg Magazine and Bloomberg Personal), on the Internet (the Bloomberg Personal Website), and on books (the Bloomberg Press). He is a celebrated businessman, author, and politician in America who is the co-founder and majority owner of Bloomberg L.P. and a three-time mayor of New York City (from 2002 to 2013).
  • Bloomberg was born into a Jewish family and grew up in Medford, Massachusetts.

    Young Mike grew up in the Boston suburb of Medford

    Young Mike grew up in the Boston suburb of Medford

  • His father was a Boston bookkeeper who never earned more than six thousand dollars a year, while his mother was a strong-willed homemaker. It was his mother who nurtured him as he moved from Boston to New York, from working class to billionaire, from anonymous to ubiquitous. [20]The New Yorker
  • He attended public schools and Hebrew schools in Medford, Massachusetts and graduated from Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School. Reportedly, in high school, he worked part-time for a Cambridge electronics company. [21]The New Yorker

    Michael Bloomberg During His School Days

    Michael Bloomberg During His School Days

  • During his first three years at Johns Hopkins University, he earned mostly C’s. [22]ABC News
  • The Bloomberg Center extension and south-facing entrance at the Harvard Business School is named to honor William Henry Bloomberg, the late father of Michael Bloomberg. [23]Harvard Business School
  • His paternal grandfather, Alexander “Elick” Bloomberg was an immigrant from Russia, while his maternal grandfather, Max Rubens was an immigrant from what is present-day Belarus.
  • The Bloomberg Family lived in Allston until Michael was two years old when the family moved to Brookline, Massachusetts for the next two years, and finally, they settled in the Boston suburb of Medford, Massachusetts, where Michael lived until after he graduated from college.
  • While attending Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg had joined the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi.
  • After graduating from the Harvard Business School in 1966, Bloomberg’s flat feet kept him out of the Army, and he took a job at Salomon Brothers. He thought that he, like everyone else, would eventually have a desk and a phone on the trading room floor. However, he had an apprenticeship to serve.

    Michael Bloomberg as a Block Trader at Salomon Brothers

    Michael Bloomberg as a Block Trader at Salomon Brothers

  • Bloomberg’s first job was in “the Cage.” There, he counted bond and stock certificates by hand, sent them to banks as collateral for overnight loans, and, when the banks returned the certificates the next morning, registered them in the firm’s inventory.
  • His second job was in the purchase-and-sales department, and there, he leafed through stacks of Wall Street Journals to find historical stock prices or went through piles of paper searching for stock-ownership lists. Eventually, Michael Bloomberg joined the equities department and became part of a new effort to trade stocks, like bonds, in bulk.
  • Bloomberg was very punctual while showing up in the Salomon Office; arriving at the office each morning at seven o’clock, he was the second to appear, after Billy Salomon, the firm’s managing partner.
  • It was Bloomberg’s diligence and honesty that in 1972, he was made a partner and later worked in the fixed-income department.
  • During his stint at Salomon Brothers, Bloomberg was more impatient than most, and his temper led him to smash more than a few telephones. He agitated for the firm to automate its Dickensian paper system, and in the early seventies, he prevailed upon Salomon to install computers at the desks of all traders and to connect these work stations to an I.B.M. mainframe computer. He came to understand that if Salomon had the best information, it would make the best trades.
  • While at Salomon, Bloomberg urged young software programmers to devise ways to deliver the information. One such programmer was Thomas Secunda, who was then a twenty-four-year-old Ph.D. candidate in mathematics, and today, he oversees Bloomberg’s R. & D. efforts.

    Michael Bloomberg and Thomas Secunda

    Michael Bloomberg and Thomas Secunda

  • In 1981, when Salomon Brothers announced that they had been bought by the Philbro Corporation, a commodities-trading giant, Bloomberg was one of about half a dozen partners who were not invited to stay. Bloomberg says,

    They threw me out after fifteen years.”

  • Bloomberg had netted $10 million worth of equity at Salomon, and with this capital, he came up with an idea about customizing information and decided to start his own firm. Bloomberg named his company “Innovative Market Systems” (IMS).

    Michael Bloomberg in His Office

    Michael Bloomberg in His Office

  • With an initial investment of three hundred thousand dollars, he opened a one-room office, and hired three Salomon proteges- Tom Secunda to create the analytics, Duncan MacMillan to learn customers’ needs, and Chuck Zegar to create the software. (The three remain with Bloomberg and are the only employees to have a small equity stake in the company).

    from left, Michael Bloomberg, Charles Zegar, Tom Secunda, and Duncan MacMillan in 1982

    from left, Michael Bloomberg, Charles Zegar, Tom Secunda, and Duncan MacMillan in 1982

  • Bloomberg had come to know that Wall Street was willing to pay for high-quality business information, so, he decided to cash this demand and developed and built a computerized system to provide real-time market data, financial calculations, and other financial analytics to Wall Street firms along with his three partners- Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan, and Charles Zegar. Initially, these machines were called “Market Master Terminals” and later on became popular as “Bloomberg Terminals.”

    Michael Bloomberg with an early version of the Bloomberg Terminal

    Michael Bloomberg with an early version of the Bloomberg Terminal

  • Bloomberg’s company witnessed its first customer in the form of Merrill Lynch in 1983. Merrill Lynch ordered twenty terminals. (Eventually, the company ordered a thousand.) Merrill Lynch also decided to invest thirty million dollars for thirty-per-cent ownership of Innovative Market Systems (IMS) and by 1984, IMS was selling machines to all of Merrill Lynch’s clients.
  • Other clients followed- the Bank of England, the Vatican, the World Bank, and the Federal Reserve. It was at about this time, more exactly in 1987, that the product, and the company, gained a new name, Bloomberg. By 1990, the company had installed 8000 terminals and went on to have more than 325,000 terminal subscribers worldwide (as of October 2015). As of 2019, Bloomberg employs 20,000 people in dozens of locations across the globe.
  • Bloomberg is known for his longing for more, and it was this longing that led him to get associated with Matthew Winkler. Winkler had been a Wall Street Journal reporter who covered the securities industry, and in 1988, he teamed up with the technology writer Michael Miller to write about Bloomberg. Winkler and Miller wrote a front-page story about how Bloomberg was waging a successful guerrilla war against his larger competitors. Almost a year after the Journal story appeared, Bloomberg invited Winkler to lunch, and after talking for hours he asked Winkler to build him a news service. Startled, Winkler said he needed to think about it, and thus, Winkler went on to become Bloomberg’s four hundred and fifty-fifth employee.

    Michael Bloomberg with Matthew Winkler

    Michael Bloomberg with Matthew Winkler

  • Bloomberg and Winkler accelerated the expansion of their news staff, and by 1995, Bloomberg’s news service had been carried in more American newspapers than any other news service, after the A.P.
  • Next, it was time to expand into radio and television. In the early nineties, Jonathan Fram, an executive of the Financial News Network (FNN), suggested Bloomberg bid against Dow Jones and NBC to buy FNN, but Bloomberg said that he built businesses, he didn’t buy them. In 1992, Bloomberg and Fram acquired WNEW, a New York City radio station that featured songs by Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. However, Bloomberg dropped this format, substituted business, and hard news, and gave the station new call letters, WBBR.
  • Bloomberg’s next venture was television. He began producing a daily two-hour news program for the USA Network; produced a daily half-hour business show for PBS stations; invited PBS to produce from his headquarters studio both “The Charlie Rose Show” and “Adam Smith’s Money World”; and provided a twenty-four-hour news service, Bloomberg Information Television, for satellite television in the United States, and, in French, Japanese, Italian, Spanish; around the world. In an interview, Matt Winkler said,

    TV and radio is Mike Bloomberg’s baby.”

  • As an active Democrat, Bloomberg makes contributions to Democratic candidates and to such moderate Republicans as New York’s Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. In his memoir, he had expressed a somewhat immodest desire to go into government himself, he said,

    If I ever ran, it would be for a job in the executive branch of government—mayor, governor, or president.”

  • In 2001, Bloomberg left the position of CEO to pursue a political career as the mayor of New York City. Reportedly, he accepted a remuneration of $1 annually for his services as the mayor of New York City. [24]The New York Times

    Emma Bloomberg, with her father Michael Bloomberg at his office, in 2002

    Emma Bloomberg, with her father Michael Bloomberg at his office, in 2002

  • In a surprising move, Bloomberg, a lifelong member of the Democratic Party, decided to run for mayor on a Republican Party ticket. Voting in the primary began on the morning of September 11, 2001. However, it was postponed later that day, due to the September 11 attacks. When Bloomberg emerged the winner, it was the first time in New York City history that two different Republicans had been elected mayor consecutively.
  • In November 2019, he announced that for his presidential campaign in 2020 he will not be taking any donations, he said,

    I’m going to finance a campaign — if there is one — with my own money so I don’t owe anybody anything.”

  • He has been eloquent on various social issues, like supporting abortion rights, same-sex marriage, strict gun control measures, environmentalism, and a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
  • Bloomberg is also known for his policy on smoking ban in New York City. However, in a 2001 interview, he admitted that he smoked marijuana, he said,

    You bet I did. I enjoyed it.”

  • Bloomberg’s activism extends to philanthropy. He says he derived this attitude from his father, who always contributed to the N.A.A.C.P., and encouraged his son to become a Cub Scout to help the elderly to the polls on Election Day. Through his Bloomberg Philanthropies Foundation, he has donated/pledged $240 million in 2005, $60 million in 2006, $47 million in 2007, $150 million in 2009, $332 million in 2010, $311 million in 2011, and $510M in 2015.
  • He actively takes part in health awareness campaigns and gets himself personally involved in various health awareness drives, including blood donation.

    Bloomberg donates blood in Mayor Office Blood Drive in New York

    Bloomberg donates blood in Mayor Office Blood Drive in New York

  • Bloomberg says he intends to give away before he dies what Morris Offit (former chairman of the board of Johns Hopkins) estimates to be a two-billion-dollar fortune. Bloomberg says,

    If you give it away before you die, you get enormous pleasure.”

  • Otherwise, Bloomberg’s private life is filled with dinner parties, and family, his two teenage daughters, and his ex-wife, Susan Brown. Bloomberg and Susan have established relationships with others, yet to this day, he refers to her as his closest confidante.

    Michael Bloomberg With His Ex-Wife Susan Brown

    Michael Bloomberg With His Ex-Wife Susan Brown

  • Michael Bloomberg is a licensed pilot and flies his helicopter to Baltimore to spend an average of one day each week there.

    Michael Bloomberg Flying his Helicopter

    Michael Bloomberg Flying his Helicopter

  • Bloomberg doesn’t much enjoy movies, the theatre, or television. He says,

    I fundamentally don’t like watching other people do things.”

    Michael Bloomberg at the opening of Midtown Comics in New York City

    Michael Bloomberg at the opening of Midtown Comics in New York City

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