Friday, April 17, 2015

Bloomberg media

So as a person who watches Bloomberg television channel often, and as someone who frequents the bloomberg.com website to update myself on the day's financial and market news, I was taken aback by something I noticed today, or rather something I didn't notice. One of the major news in the markets today, albeit with less impact, was an outage of the bloomberg terminals that caused a disruption for traders worldwide. Here is an excerpt from an article in today's Wall Street Journal (http://www.wsj.com/articles/bloomberg-terminals-go-down-globally-1429262782) 

"Bloomberg LP was hit by a massive computer-network outage Friday, forcing its terminals out of action for hours and leading to major disruptions for traders around the world who rely heavily on the machines.
The blackout, which started shortly after European markets opened, also caused the U.K. to postpone a scheduled multibillion buyback of government debt. The £3 billion ($4.5 billion) tender was rescheduled for the afternoon."
And here is an except from an article in today's New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/18/business/dealbook/bloomberg-terminals-outage.html?_r=0) - 
"The failure at Bloomberg, which provides data and trading services for 325,000 financial professionals around the world, effectively shut down some parts of the capital markets and forced traders to confront their level of reliance on the Bloomberg system."
Now, I was actually watching Bloomberg television channel this morning - almost for an hour just before the financial markets opened and Bloomberg never reported this news. I actually first found out when I accidentally switched channels to CNBC which had this "breaking news". I thought I might have missed this reporting on the Bloomberg channel when I was busy enjoying the taste of my morning coffee. But then I went to bloomberg.com and still didn't see this news anywhere. And now again in the evening, I checked the site and even googled for it - but I don't see it. I just don't see it. I don't know if it is buried somewhere in the website under the pile of news, but I don't see it.  
I have had great respect for bloomberg media, but if they did not report this news or under-reported it, then I am afraid that I just would have lost a little bit of respect for them. 

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