Who buys Bloomberg if its owner becomes president?

Jennifer Saba of Reuters Breakingviews writes about what would happen to Bloomberg LP if its owner became president.

Saba writes, “The company’s revenue will hit $10.5 billion this year, with a 37% profit margin, Burton-Taylor International Consulting reckons. Add back taxes and capital expenditures, and Bloomberg’s EBITDA may be around $5.3 billion. At 12 times those earnings, Bloomberg LP could be worth more than $60 billion.

“That limits the universe of potential buyers. Private equity firms could try to emulate Blackstone’s $20 billion purchase of Bloomberg rival Refinitiv from Thomson Reuters, the parent of Breakingviews. They’d need to band together in a so-called ‘club deal’ to raise enough money, which they might be willing to do if it meant owning Wall Street’s elite provider of financial data.

“Microsoft could consider adding financial information to the services it offers enterprises around the globe. With a $1 trillion market capitalization, it could absorb Bloomberg easily. Ditto Google, whose parent Alphabet has more than $100 billion of cash on its balance sheet. Bloomberg might also fit with IBM’s goal of gathering more data, which led it to acquire the Weather Co in 2016.”

Read more here.