Bloomberg’s Betty Liu is the CEO whisperer

Patrick Clark of the New York Observer went to Bloomberg Television last Wednesday for Betty Liu‘s “In the Loop” post-election show, which focused on Wall Street’s reaction to Obama’s re-election.

Clark writes, “She started her career as a Hong Kong reporter for the Dow Jones Newswire in the aftermath of the British handover and earned a quick promotion to chief of Dow Jones’s five-person Taiwan bureau at the age of 23. After five years at The Financial Times’s Atlanta bureau and a year off after the birth of twin boys, she took to live TV, first as an Asia correspondent for CNBC and, for the last five years, as an anchor at Bloomberg.

“At Bloomberg TV, Ms. Liu has a reputation as a CEO-whisperer. She’s one of the few journalists Warren Buffett will speak to and is well-trusted by master-of-the-universe types. ‘I was just having lunch with Jim Chanos at Michael’s,’ she told OTR, name-checking the Kynikos Associates hedge fund manager perhaps best known for shorting Enron’s stock. ‘He was joking, ‘Everyone who’s making deals is in the back room, everyone who wants to interview the people making deals is in the front, waiting for the deal-makers to come out.’ Where did Ms. Liu and Mr. Chanos dine? ‘We were in the back. I was trying to make a deal to interview him!’

“Indeed, Ms. Liu’s comfortable relationship with executives was apparent on Wednesday’s show, as guests treated the set as a clubhouse of sorts. Mr. Hindery teased Mr. Mack about the election results — ‘You used to be a good North Carolina Democrat’ — and Mr. Reynolds seemed to have a deal he wanted to pitch to just about everybody.

“Even sad-faced Mr. Golub, now the chairman of boutique investment bank Miller Buckfire, was in a chatty mood. ‘I like to do Betty’s show because I have no idea what her politics are,’ he told OTR.”

Read more here.