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Wednesday, February 19, 2020

If Elected, Bloomberg To Sell Media Empire

Michael Bloomberg will sell Bloomberg LP, the multibillion-dollar financial-data and media company he co-founded nearly 40 years ago, if he is elected president, his campaign said Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal reports the campaign said Mr. Bloomberg would first put the company in a blind trust and eventually sell. Analysts have estimated the company could sell for as much as $60 billion.

The future of Bloomberg’s company had been in question since he announced his run for president in November, with him and his advisers going back and forth on whether he would place the business in a blind trust if he won, or if he would divest his interests entirely.

On Tuesday, after a campaign policy adviser said on CNN that the former New York City mayor intended to sell his company if he won, campaign spokeswoman Galia Slayen acknowledged that the company would ultimately be sold in the event of a victory over President Trump in November.

The 78-year-old Bloomberg has aggressively campaigned by challenging Trump’s ethics, noting that the president never placed his business interests in a blind trust, instead turning them over to his sons to run. Democrats in Congress have accused the president of accepting payments from foreign governments through his hotels and golf resorts, claiming he has violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bars such transactions. The White House has argued in court that stays at the president’s hotels were not in violation of the law, and an appeals court recently rejected a lawsuit by House Democrats saying they lacked standing to bring the case.

As Bloomberg has risen in the polls, questions about how he would manage his vast wealth from the Oval Office have gotten louder. Forbes estimates Mr. Bloomberg’s net worth at around $54 billion.

According to Burton-Taylor International Consulting, a research firm that tracks financial-data companies, Bloomberg LP brought in approximately $10.5 billion in revenue in 2019, up 5.7% over the year before. Bloomberg LP provides news and data to some 325,000 customers, each paying a fixed price of $24,000 a year.

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