Being a billionaire, Bill Gross probably won’t ever want for anything in this life or the next, whether that’s food, shelter, companionship – or access to the world’s largest trove of financial data.
But that doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate a generous birthday gift from a longtime friend (and fellow billionaire), according to the Financial Times.
To honor Gross’s legendary four-decade run as America’s “bond king,” Michael Bloomberg has gifted the bond investor a free lifetime subscription for Gross’s three Bloomberg terminals, which Gross – who revolutionized the world of bond trading and founded the world’s biggest fixed-income focused asset management firm – will probably use while managing the bulk of his fortune in a one-man family office.
“I didn’t want to lose my Bloombergs,” Gross told the FT. “So they contacted me and said we appreciate all our years together, so your Bloomberg are free for the rest of your life. It was a nice touch.” A year-long BBG subscription costs $24,000 a year, making it far and away the most expensive financial data platform.
Though competitors continue to try and chip away at BBG’s dominance by taking aim at its chat function and its data sets, BBG still controls roughly 32% of the market for financial data products. Its closest competitor, Refinitiv/Reuters News, controls roughly 22%. The rest of the market is controlled by smaller providers like FactSet and S&P Global. Despite the advent of new competitors like Sentieo, the number of active Bloomberg subscriptions climbed to 330,068 last year, a new record, according to the FT.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2J1uK3v Tyler Durden