Bloomberg campaign says he'll sell his company if elected president

(Image credit: Brett Carlsen/Getty Images)

published 19 February 2020

If Mike Bloomberg is elected president this November, he would sell his financial information business, a campaign official told NBC News on Tuesday.

Bloomberg, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and the former Republican mayor of New York, founded Bloomberg L.P. in 1981; the company has an estimated annual revenue of roughly $10 billion, and could be worth $40 billion, CNBC reports. The official said Bloomberg L.P. would be put into a blind trust for "eventual sale," but did not give an estimated timeline. Because the company would be in a blind trust, Bloomberg would have "no involvement" in its sale. Bloomberg L.P. employs an estimated 20,000 people.

Tim O'Brien, a senior adviser to the campaign, told CNN Bloomberg will "release his taxes" and there will be "no confusion about any of his financial holdings, blurring the line between public service and personal profiteering. We will be 180 degrees away from where Donald Trump is on these issues because Donald Trump is a walking conflict of interest." President Trump did not put his Trump Organization into a blind trust, and it is being run by his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.