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Once a gnat-sized start-up, Bloomberg has grown into one of the largest pushers of financial information in the world. Chairman Peter Grauer on the rise and rise of the data dynamo.

Even for a firm in the business of creating headlines, it’s a bold claim. A deadpan Peter Grauer, chairman of Bloomberg, has just informed me that his company was behind the first online social network.

“There is in excess of 15 million messages every day crossing our system,” he tells me gravely.

“I would also argue that blogging started on Bloomberg,” chimes in Max Linnington, head of the firm’s Dubai office. “The first availability to send en masse email was 1995. We came out with our message system in 1991.”

I’m tempted to scoff but, if Bloomberg’s reputation for near-martial discipline is to be believed, I’m not sure it’s permitted. More importantly, there’s a chance it’s true.

It’s no exaggeration to say Bloomberg has changed the landscape of Wall Street. The brainchild of Michael Bloomberg — now better known as New York’s mayor Mike — the firm has, in 28 years, grown into one of the largest purveyors of financial data in the world. Its famed terminals are a staple of trading and financial floors worldwide, where they churn out an all-you-can-eat buffet of market data, analytic software, trading tools and news to more than 340,000 users.

Once viewed as a pesky start-up by arch-rivals Dow Jones and Reuters, the pair have watched in dismay as the Bloomberg juggernaut has rumbled on to become — according to market sentiment, at least — the industry gold standard. (This is a particular rub as, in its early days, Bloomberg used to pay to use their news feeds.)

So who’s to say it hasn’t notched up a slice of cyber history in the process?

There’s no doubting Bloomberg’s success but its secret is quite simple. The firm levelled the playing field for buy-side traders. The analytics on Bloomberg were previously available mainly to sellers. Thanks to the web of terminals, buy-siders suddenly had the means to prove when a seller’s price was too high. From trading in the dark, buyers had an incentive to force sell-siders to put their business through Bloomberg. And terminals became must-have items.

“We have about 60 percent of our users on the buying side, the investment institutions around the world, and about 40 percent are on the sell-side,” says Grauer, “and so we have built our business. If the buy-side wants the information, the sell-side is going to have to put that on the terminal to allow them to execute their business.”

We are sitting in the firm’s Dubai office – which last year was upgraded, in Bloomberg-speak, to a ‘regional hub’, ranking alongside London, New York and Hong Kong as a key financial market — where Grauer is paying a flying visit. The view outside the meeting room mirrors a trading floor, with employers packed in side-by-side before Bloomberg screens. Even the paper cups are Bloomberg-branded.

Between meetings, Grauer, who has headed the firm since January 2002, prowls the staff floor flicking idly through a newspaper, one eye on the wall-mounted screens for market updates.

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