Had a very pleasant evening at the inauguration of the impressive Janes Financial Center at the Argyros School of Business and Economics. The Center is equipped with twelve Bloomberg terminals providing state-of-the-art, real-time, financial data and business research information to students. So now the score is that Chapman University has twelve Bloomberg terminals while USC has two, or was it one?
Bloomberg terminals don’t come cheaply and the center would not have been made possible without the contribution of the main donors, Donna and David Janes, long-time Chapman supporters. Many guests in attendance at the dinner and the keynote speaker was William “Bill” Thompson, ex-CEO of PIMCO, who shared some anecdotes from his long tenure at Salomon Brothers with a particular focus on his colleague Michael Bloomberg, a very timely topic for the night. Michael Bloomberg, Thompson said, was relegated to the “Systems Division” in the late 1970s, then a fate equal to being sent to the basement. Later, when Bloomberg emerged to propose an focus on information research and analysis, he was turned down and he soon thereafter parted ways with Salomon Brothers. Then, he started his success story Innovative Market Systems and the rest is history. The power of information Michael Bloomberg saw earlier than most and now Chapman University has twelve Bloomberg terminals, not bad!
