Q&A: Peter T Grauer, Chairman, Bloomberg LP

Bloomberg LP is serious about increasing its footprint in India. On Monday, the global financial news and data provider inaugurated its new swanky office in Mumbai. Peter T Grauer, chairman, spoke to Varada Bhat about why the Indian market is important, their investment plans here and the changing landscape of the news business. Edited excerpts:

India is one of the key emerging markets, apart from Brazil, Russia and China, that Bloomberg has identified for growth. What are your plans for India across all your businesses?
We started here 15 years ago, with small base. And now, for the first time in Bloomberg's history, we have an India-specific five-year plan. This business plan has five main elements. One is news, in which we intend to improve and expand our coverage across all asset classes that Indian and global investors care about. Two, equity markets where we are already the preferred weapon of choice. We want to maintain our market leadership position in the cash and the derivatives equity market in India. The third objective is to capture and grow our presence in the Indian fixed income markets. Four, we are aggressively entering the forex market in India, which till now we never really tapped. Finally, we want to focus sharply on providing systems for the Indian domestic asset management community. The message we want to send is, Bloomberg is a local product with a local service, which is why we are growing our staff. In our new office in Mumbai, we have increased the headcount to 90. Our overall staff strength in India is 130-150 people.

 

How much is the contribution from Indian markets compared with that in other emerging markets?
Currently, our India revenues are very modest, but in the next five years, we are optimistic about its growth.

What about investments?
We plan to invest here in terms of human capital and broaden our product portfolio. We think the Indian market holds a great growth opportunity. And, as the market evolves and develops more broadly, similar to some of the developed markets around the world, most of the Bloomberg capabilities will be available here. What we are very excited about is that we have listened to a lot of our customers, and many of them like to be serviced locally by locals.

One decision we have made is to put in one of the most important departments, our analytics desk, for customers in Mumbai. So, the Indian customers will be able to talk directly to Indian staff about the Indian domestic market and all the markets they want to.

You have taken a 16 per cent stake in UTV, given it the Bloomberg name and the content. Are you pleased with how the joint venture has shaped up?
We are happy with the progress. We think the partnership has been very successful and will exceed our expectation. In the past, we have had very few of such relationships and this is largely because we have always chosen to go on our own as a 100 per cent shareholder. But this is a market where we can’t do that. We spent probably two years looking for the right partner. Ultimately, we got engaged with the UTV team.

Do you plan to raise your stake 26 per cent, as that is within permissible limit?
At present, we have no such plans. For Bloomberg, more than business, the TV channel is a vehicle to build the brand. We made a decision just over two years ago to restructure Bloomberg television, by getting out of local language programming. We used to be in a position where we produced English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese-language business television for Bloomberg. But we decided to move away from that model and focus on a model that will give us a global channel and much more leverage in producing the highest quality content and the best distribution.

How does BusinessWeek fit into your portfolio?
BusinessWeek (BW) covers a market which we essentially do not cover so well. Our ultimate aim is is to be the most influential news organisation in the world for the financial markets and the business community; the BW acquisition is a logical extension for us to be able to achieve that. We believe the BW acquisition will yield huge benefits for users of the Bloomberg Professional Service, for Bloomberg News, and for our television, Internet and other multimedia properties. While Bloomberg customers are primarily financial professionals, BW is read by CEOs, CFOs, deal lawyers, investment banks, product managers, and high government officials. So, BW will expand our audience.

Considering you have huge plans in India, do you plan to distribute your content and products in Indian languages as well?
At present, we are not looking at it as most of our subscribers here communicate in English. Basically in all the countries we operate in, English is the most preferred medium. Only in Japan 80 per cent of subscribers use the Japanese service.

What do you think about the changing landscape of news business. Do you see web as potential threat?
Yes. As a result of that, we have services and products that allow to access Bloomberg service from any Internet connected desk top and also through mobiles. We have customised applications for Blackberry, iPad, iPhone, Androids and select Nokia devices.