Gwynn Guilford of Quartz writes about Bloomberg’s situation in China, where it has apparently shied away from publishing investigative articles for fear of upsetting government officials.
Guilford writes, “While this might sound contrarian, the company over time likely has a lot more leverage to pursue both hard-hitting journalism and commercial success than its chairman Peter Grauer suggests.
“Chinese state-owned enterprises have Bloomberg terminals, despite the fact that China has its homegrown terminal technology, called Wind. Even researchers at the People’s Bank of China (paywall), the country’s central bank, use them. They do so because they need access to them to compete. While Bloomberg’s competitors could benefit from the government’s dissatisfaction with the company’s reporting, it’s not clear that’s happening or ever will.
“In fact, China needs Bloomberg a lot more than Bloomberg will need revenue from that market. As Chinese companies engage more with the global economy—particularly in complex things like currency and commodity trading—they’ll face an enormous competitive disadvantage without Bloomberg’s data and news.
“And that’s with a closed capital account. As China opens up its financial sector, its reliance on Bloomberg for fast, accurate global data and news could only grow—and the Chinese government’s ability to block that flow of information will risk the collateral damage of its own companies’ losses.”
Read more here.
