Bloomberg terminals, widely used by traders to access real-time financial data, went down globally for a few hours Friday, disrupting a bond sale in the United Kingdom.
Service was later restored. The company said in a Twitter post that there was “no indication at this point that this is anything other than an internal network issue.”
The terminals, also known as Bloomberg Professional, cost about $24,000 a year, according to Quartz, and are a staple at many large financial firms, which use them for analysis, trading securities and for its messaging function, a key communications mode among traders and other financial professionals.
The crash wasa huge black eye for the company, which is known for its top-drawer customer service and, generally, its reliability.
While Bloomberg has been seeking to expand its other businesses, most visibly trying to raise the profile of its media business, terminal sales account most of the New York company’s revenue – 85 percent as of 2014, while the media business still provides just a sliver. The company’s profit margin was 30% in 2013 on revenue of $8.3 billion.
Lately, the company had been focused on media expansion after recovering from a couple of embarrassing public stumbles in 2013. That year, the company was forced to launch on extensive internal review after clients, who are mostly big financial firms, complained that some of Bloomberg’s news reporters may have misused confidential client data in their reporting. The review prompted an overhaul of company procedures separating the newsroom from the business side of the organization. The same year, the firm drew unwanted attention after competing news organizations reported that a lengthy investigation into public corruption charges was spiked at the behest of top editors. Allegations later surface that business concerns influenced the decision.
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