25th September 2019
On the 25th September, the Finance and Management Master Students from PHBS UK Campus went to London to visit one of the most dynamic financial companies in the world. With more than 300,00 customers, Bloomberg is a global provider of financial news and information, including real-time data.
The light and warmth provided by the wood and the immense glass windows never cease to surprise the visitor all the way through the different layers of the Bloomberg building, that won the Riba Stirling prize for architecture.
Besides the vertical garden and the amazing views from Saint Paul’s Cathedral, another surprising factor is bumping into big aquariums that instantly provide beauty and a feeling of relaxing environment. They have a symbolic presence. Founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981, this financial, software, data and media company used to get one fish, every time a new employee was joining the company. With more than 160 locations and nearly 20,000 employees, this tradition became unpractical, but still, the aquariums remain. As a good practice memory.
The European headquarters, in London, represent the first owned and designed Bloomberg building and it brings under the same roof 4,000 employees. Opened in 2017, it sets new standards for sustainability and innovation.
On the sixth floor, the students could see the “whole picture”: the spiral stairs, the glass window meeting rooms, the half a circle corridors, meeting areas and seats, a space distribution that encourages interaction and brings people together. A dynamic ambiance made to energize not only the employees and its level of productivity and collaboration, but also the clients and visitors.
Bloomberg provides financial software tools, enterprise applications, data services and creates content across multiple platforms. The services include a wire service (Bloomberg News), a global television network (Bloomberg Television), websites, radio stations (Bloomberg Radio) subscription-only newsletters, and two magazines: Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg Markets.
This visit also allowed students to understand how the iconic Bloomberg Terminal works. How to search and cross information, evaluate companies and even how to search for restaurants and flights. It is a software system and computer interface that permits to track and analyze world’s breaking news. The average customer pays upwards of $20,000 per year for the service. It is one of the Bloomberg’s key revenue earners.
The Master students wanted to search financial information about big companies, learn how to cross information, understand how data is translated between countries and the general services that Bloomberg provides. During the visit there were other questions that were building up in their minds: What jobs and internships are available? The dynamic environment that flows through the company seemed to have also energized our Master students to think about their future options. One of the pieces that materialize this felling is a kind of undulating metallic pool, by Olafur Eliasson, that they could find on the ceiling at the building’s entrance. It is titled “No future is possible without a past”.
Written by Anabela Santos
