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Its current headquarters are located at the Bloomberg Tower, 731 Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building is also known as One Beacon Court for the lighted rectangular beacon that caps the tower and the paved courtyard at the ground level. It was formed as a Delaware Limited Partnership in 1981 and has been in business since 1983. Michael Bloomberg owns 85% of the group. Bloomberg's core business is leasing terminals to subscribers. It also runs Bloomberg Television, a financial TV station, and a business radio station WBBR in New York City at a loss. Bloomberg's revenue for last year (2009) was estimated at $6.25 billion. Based on that estimate, the new projections would push revenue to nearly $6.9 billion this year (2010). There are currently over 300,000 Bloomberg Terminal subscribers worldwide.Its competitors include SNL Financial, Thomson Reuters, Capital IQ, Dow Jones Newswires, FactSet Research Systems and smaller companies such as New York Financial Press. In late 1996 Bloomberg bought back one-third of Merrill Lynch's 30 percent stake in his company for $200 million valuing the company at $2.0 billion. In July 2008, Merrill Lynch agreed to sell its 20% stake in the firm back to Bloomberg, for a reported $4.43 billion, valuing the firm at approximately $22.5 billion. |