Bloomberg can not take Wall Street for granted

John Gapper of The Financial Times writes about the Bloomberg LP snooping scandal, warning the financial data and news company about taking Wall Street for granted.

Gapper writers, “They could turn to its competitors, such as Thomson Reuters, or they could go it alone – creating their own instant messaging, pricing and data services, in the way that they have established ‘dark pool’ trading platforms to compete with exchanges. The internet has put the technology in their hands.

“Bloomberg does not have much experience of playing defence because it has spent its life on the attack, outflanking rivals with ‘the Bloomberg Way’ and expanding into news, television and magazines. (There is speculation that it wants to buy the Financial Times or The New York Times.)

“It took three attempts to get its response right, finally filling its trading screens with an apology from Dan Doctoroff, its chief executive. It is not used to saying sorry and, like other technology companies, its success has bred arrogance – it tends to think it knows best.

“‘It has a cult-like structure in which everyone is a believer,’ says one former Bloomberg executive. ‘There is such a degree of holy righteousness that journalism can only be done the Bloomberg Way that I was surprised by a failure of judgment on this scale.'”

Read more here.