Bloomberg's transparent attack on JPM's reputation
Yesterday on Bloomberg's widely viewed website the lead story was "Whale of a Trade Revealed at U.S. Bank with Best Control". I looked at that headline and immediately thought, "oh no", not another one.
The story remains among the top highlighted ones today on the website.
The article in fact is a detailed rehash of last years $6.2 billion trading loss by a group of essentially rogue traders in London. Absolutely nothing in the article is new information, with the most recent information being from June 2012. That's one year ago, but the headline reads as if this is current news. Printed out the article is over 10 pages long. This is almost unprecedented vindictive behavior by Bloomberg.
Could it have something to do with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs uncovering and publicizing the fact just this month that Bloomberg routinely allowed their reporters to monitor some private information it gets through its widely used data terminals that it sells to investors, hedge funds, and even the Fed and many Central Banks. This news was reported widely earlier this week and Bloomberg's editor publicly apologized for this long standing practice of violating client privacy. That's the client privacy of 315,000 subscribers that the reporters could pick and choose from.
Is there a legal issue here. One could assume that buyers of Bloomberg's terminal services have contracts with some mention of protection of their information and any misuse of it by Bloomberg itself. Is this strangely dated article on JPM a warning to them and by extension to Goldman(the proverbial "shot across the bow") that if this becomes a legal issue Bloomberg will use their reporting and editorial clout to encourage legal action against other firms related to trading or securities issues at their firms. Seems like it could be.
Or is it simply the hubris of Bloomberg showing itself as in "how dare JPMorgan and Goldman's public relations departments compare notes and see a pattern of information flows that were not public being used by the vaunted Bloomberg's reporting team". Watch out Goldman, you may be next for a misleading headline.
The story remains among the top highlighted ones today on the website.
The article in fact is a detailed rehash of last years $6.2 billion trading loss by a group of essentially rogue traders in London. Absolutely nothing in the article is new information, with the most recent information being from June 2012. That's one year ago, but the headline reads as if this is current news. Printed out the article is over 10 pages long. This is almost unprecedented vindictive behavior by Bloomberg.
Could it have something to do with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs uncovering and publicizing the fact just this month that Bloomberg routinely allowed their reporters to monitor some private information it gets through its widely used data terminals that it sells to investors, hedge funds, and even the Fed and many Central Banks. This news was reported widely earlier this week and Bloomberg's editor publicly apologized for this long standing practice of violating client privacy. That's the client privacy of 315,000 subscribers that the reporters could pick and choose from.
Is there a legal issue here. One could assume that buyers of Bloomberg's terminal services have contracts with some mention of protection of their information and any misuse of it by Bloomberg itself. Is this strangely dated article on JPM a warning to them and by extension to Goldman(the proverbial "shot across the bow") that if this becomes a legal issue Bloomberg will use their reporting and editorial clout to encourage legal action against other firms related to trading or securities issues at their firms. Seems like it could be.
Or is it simply the hubris of Bloomberg showing itself as in "how dare JPMorgan and Goldman's public relations departments compare notes and see a pattern of information flows that were not public being used by the vaunted Bloomberg's reporting team". Watch out Goldman, you may be next for a misleading headline.
posted by John Borden at 1:46 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home