Categories: OLD Media Moves

Former SEC head calls for independent review of Bloomberg

An independent review is needed after Bloomberg‘s admission that its reporters had access to some proprietary client information on its data terminals, former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt told CNBC on Monday.

Matthew Belvedere, a producer for CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” writes, “The admission indicates an oversight failure at the company, said Pitt, who was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission under President George W. Bush.

“‘All we know is what the people who put all of this terrible activity in place are now telling us,’ Pitt said in a ‘Squawk Box‘ interview. ‘We just have Bloomberg’s denials. And at this point, those aren’t very credible.'”

Belvedere later writes, “Bart Chilton, commissioner at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, told CNBC, ‘There’s something of a void here in that there is no regulator that really looks after new information providers.’

“But he said that the CFTC plans to pass a rule later this week that could allow the agency an oversight role.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.