Dan Doctoroff |
Yesterday, Dan Doctoroff CEO of Bloomberg sent a letter to Bloomberg terminal customers outlining the results of two investigations of the company’s data security and journalistic practices. The investigations were triggered by reports in May 2013 that Bloomberg news reporters had access to some subscriber information.
A Video Statement from Dan Doctoroff, the letter to customers, and the full reports from HoganLovells/Promontory on security and Hoyt on journalistic standards are available at
The news division began 23 years ago with a “handful of scrappy journalists ” The division has grown to over 2,000 journalists and reporting has become a more important part of the business terminal offering. The report described how the peculiar origins of the news function at Bloomberg blurred lines between journalism and commerce. Reporters sometimes accompanied terminal sales people on visits to clients and potential clients because they wanted for find out what type of news subscribers would find useful.
Hoyt concluded that Bloomberg didn’t do enough to reassess the relationship between news and our commercial operations as their news department grew and their business expanded. Doctoroff agreed with the assessment: “The fact that we didn’t recognize the sensitivity of journalist access to limited client data represents an example of how our policies did not keep pace with the realities of our growth and evolution.”
Customer Response A story in today’s New York TImes reports that the two most outspoken banks regrading Bloomberg;s practices, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, expressed satisfaction on Wednesday with Bloomberg’s review.”We appreciate their commitment to safeguarding client data and their willingness to review their practices,” a Goldman spokesman, David Wells, said. Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan, said that Bloomberg “handled all aspects of the review very well.”
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