1942–, American businessman and politician, mayor of New York City (2002–), b. Medford, Mass. Bloomberg studied at Johns Hopkins Univ. (B.S., 1964) and Harvard Business School (M.B.A., 1966). Rising quickly in the world of finance, he became a partner at Salomon Brothers, but in 1981, after a merger, he was fired. Anticipating growing needs for business information, he used his $10 million severance to start a financial data and communications company, Bloomberg L.P. The company grew rapidly into a huge multifaceted enterprise that provides accurate real-time financial and business data as well as historical data and analysis and electronic communications and produces television and radio programs. Bloomberg himself became a multibillionaire. In 2001, running as a Republican and spending record-breaking amounts of his own money on the campaign, Bloomberg was elected to succeed Rudolph Giuliani as New York's mayor.

See his autobiography, Bloomberg by Bloomberg (1997).

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