This is one of the great success stories in finance. Founded in 1981 by the son of a Boston bookkeeper, this company has grown to become one of the world's leading information services organizations serving customers in 100 countries around the world. It employs over 400 people in nine sales offices, two data centers and 80 news bureaus worldwide. Michael Bloomberg began his career in the "cage" of Salomon Brothers & Hutzler. His first job was counting bond certificates and registering them in the firm's inventory. He then moved on to the equities department and eventually the fixed-income department, trading stocks and bonds in bulk. At that time on Wall Street, the back office and the salesmen worked on computer terminals but they did not interact. If salesmen needed a bond yield and there was no information in the computer, they had to look it up in a book or use a calculator. Mr. Bloomberg convinced management that all salesmen should have a computer at their desks connected to a mainframe computer. His reasoning was simple, if the Salomon salesmen had the best information they would make the best trades. As a result, the salesmen were liberated by having ready access to necessary information. Being a trader, he understood the needs of his salesmen and their customers. And being an engineer by background, he understood the necessary technology. When Salomon announced its merger with Phibro Corp. in 1981, Michael Bloomberg was one of many who left the firm. He took his severance, formed a partnership with three former colleagues and set about convincing Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith that his black information box could offer its traders and salesmen a variety of information including yield curve analyses, the ability to track every transaction, marking to market all inventory instantaneously, with a secure e-mail system to communicate with customers, suppliers and co-workers. No one else offered these features. A Merrill Lynch executive said the company could build the same system. Bloomberg offered to do the job in six months with Merrill being under no obligation to buy it. The offer was accepted. Merrill ordered 1,000 terminals and took a thirty percent interest in the new company. The partnership still continues although Merrill recently sold a third of its interest back to Bloomberg. Today there are about one hundred thousand computer terminals around the world built on the basic premise of serving the customer all information necessary. The system generates real-time worldwide pricing of bonds, stocks, commodities, currencies, money market instrument and mortgages. It has news of corporations and filings with the Securities & Exchange Commission stretching back over ten years. Its data library includes information on sixty-five thousand companies using eight hundred categories of information. It allows clients to buy or sell stocks, bonds, and even airline tickets. The company has expanded into radio and television news, beginning in 1992 with the purchase of WNEW-AM in New York. Television stations provide twenty-four hour news service in French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish (as well as English) around the world. Bloomberg News has over seven hundred reporters and editors in eighty of the world's major cities. News stories are syndicated without charge in over eight hundred newspapers. Bloomberg simply asks for a byline for the article. Name recognition is one of the cornerstones of the company. With the black boxes, radio, television and the new magazine, it seems to appear everywhere. Subscribers pay a fixed price for everything the classic Bloomberg box can offer. It has two monitors, one keyboard and over four thousand functions. The key to its real-time capabilities-instantaneous quotes, functions and analytical communications-is a high speed network using dedicated digital phone lines allowing for interactive communication. It is regarded by most as simply the best in the industry. There are no private offices or corporate titles at Bloomberg L. P. Everyone is on a first-name basis, casually attired, and motivated by being on a remarkable, winning team.