Bloomberg: Reviews, Features, Pricing and Alternatives

Since its founding in 1981, Bloomberg has become a market leader in the financial data industry by building a comprehensive database of public equity and fixed income data delivered through its well-known Bloomberg Terminal. In addition, the company delivers other non-financial data through the Bloomberg Terminal including restaurant reviews (DINE) and flight information (FLY). One of the more popular features of the Bloomberg Terminal is the chat messaging system. The Bloomberg Terminal uses an old-school interface that is largely operated through text commands (ex. ANR for analyst recommendations or WACC for weighted average cost of capital). The Bloomberg Terminal has a cult following in the financial services sector, with more than 325K terminal users on its platform which generates an estimated $9 billion in annual revenue.

Here is the corporate timeline for Bloomberg, LP:

• 1981: Founded as Innovative Market Systems (IMS) by Michael Bloomberg after he receives a $10 million buyout from Salomon Brothers.
• 1982: Merrill Lynch becomes the company’s first customer and invests $30 million for a 30% equity stake.
• 1986: The company is renamed Bloomberg, LP.
• 1996: Bloomberg repurchases 10% of the equity from Merrill Lynch for $200 million, valuing the company at $2 billion.
• 2009: Bloomberg repurchases the remaining 20% equity stake from Merrill Lynch for $4 billion, valuing the company at $23 billion.

What Does Bloomberg Offer

Since launching in 1982, Bloomberg has received significant scale as a provider of public equity and fixed income data with over 19,000 employees. The company started out with a focus on  and quickly expanded to support other segments including equities, corporate development, law firms, and universities. Today, Bloomberg offers the following data on their terminals:

• Venture Capital and Angel Financings
• Private Equity Transactions
• M&A Transactions
• Limited Partner Data
• Fund Raising Data
• Lender Data
• Advisor Data
• Private Company Data

Coverage Universe

Bloomberg is an international database. It is not possible to purchase U.S. data separately.

Competitors

Bloomberg competes with the following companies in the financial data market:

• Refinitiv
• FactSet
• S&P Capital IQ
• TagniFi

Customer Reviews and Feedback

In our conversations with clients using Bloomberg, these are some of the common reasons people like the platform:

• Comprehensive fixed income data
• Hard to find closed-end fund data
• Extensive derivatives pricing data
• International data coverage
• An active chat system
• Name recognition

These are some of the reasons why people choose to move away from Bloomberg to other data platforms:

• Cumbersome user interface
• Limited Excel add-in functionality
• Unacceptable fundamental data quality
• Limitations on the amount of data that can be exported
• Public company data is not transparent or point-in-time capable
• Lack of middle-market M&A transactions and private equity data

What Does Bloomberg Cost?

Bloomberg does not publish its pricing but here are some data points we’ve run across in conversations with some of its clients:

• A family office with 1 terminal was paying $28,000 per year.
• A small fund with 2 terminals was paying $49,000 per year.
• A business valuation firm with 1 terminal was paying $28,000 per year

How Does TagniFi Compare to Bloomberg?