Michael Bloomberg: Building an Empire, Leading New York and Giving Away Billions

Hi everyone. I'm, Nikola Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Solar Wealth Fund. And today, I'm in New York, and I'm in the Bloomberg offices. Now, normally, when I'm in the Bloomberg offices, I see a journalist or an anchor. But today, I'm seeing the man himself, Michael Bloomberg. I'm very careful to not be a journalist. The one thing you can't do is get involved in the journalism if you're gonna have good journalism. So there's one guy, John Micklethwait, who runs it. Yep. Mike, you just have one of the most extraordinary journeys in in American business, starting, Bloomberg, being mayor for twelve years, being one of the most important philanthropists. And so perhaps we can just go all the way back the day that you I was born at an early age. Oh, yeah. You would. Absolutely. No. Let's start with the Salmond Brothers because Hubert, you know, straight enough, Hubert, as Omsstige, laid off, and then the next day, you started Bloomberg. So what do you what do you think then? I was, grew up in Massachusetts. Father was a bookkeeper, made $6,000 the best year of his life. I was a boy scout, I, was a c student. I always made the top half of the class possible is my guideline. And, when I was getting out of school, I went from college to business school at Harvard. I was lucky enough to get in. But, when I was ready to graduate, I thought I was gonna go to Vietnam. Partially, we were involved in that war. This was in 1966, a very nasty war in a very nasty ways. Americans treated the troops who we drafted and sent over to risk their lives. Some of them came back in boxes, and some were lucky enough and didn't. But we were just treating people terribly, and so I signed up to go. I could get a commission as a second lieutenant in the army. I thought you'd be safer as a second lieutenant than as a private. Turns out not because the second lieutenants led the charge over the barbed wire going out into the jungle, and a lot of them were killed. It turns out at the last minute, one month before graduation, I have perfectly flat feet. And they didn't take anybody with flat feet. And so all of a sudden, I wasn't gonna go to Vietnam and I had not thought at all about what I was gonna do with my career. No. And then you went into banking. I asked a friend of mine, Steve Fenster, who's a very smart guy since, unfortunately, died of cancer. And Steve, I said, what should I do? He said, go to Wall Street. I said, where is that? What do they do? Said, just do it. I said, who do I call? He said, call Solomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs. I said, what's that who are they? Just do it. So I called both. …