Bloomberg's day in New York?

To his friends - like celebrity broadcaster Barbara Walters - Michael Bloomberg is "a brilliant and charming heterosexual male" who "has to fight off being invited to the dinner parties". The founder of the Bloomberg Financial News Service would not disagree. He once listed his hobbies as "theatre, dining and chasing women", adding, "Let me put it this way. I'm a single straight billionaire in Manhattan. What do you think?"

Michael Bloomberg has worked hard on his reputation as man about town. Divorced since 1993, he flies his own helicopter and airplane (and has crash-landed both), hosts glittering parties at his Upper East Side apartment and dates such megastars as singer Diana Ross.

Some of his exuberant style has rubbed off on the company that bears his name. A "Seven Deadly Sins" Bloomberg office party in London last year reportedly featured a "lust room" with a satin-covered bed and entertainers waving bank-notes and crying, "Money, ain't it gorgeous?"

The 59-year-old mogul (his own word), who as a young stock trader boasted of having a girlfriend in every city, may want to moderate his playboy image a bit, now that he has decided to run for mayor of New York. But not by much.

New Yorkers like colourful, risque personalities. Witness how they adore Bill Clinton, who in a Daily News poll won 66 per cent support in a hypothetical contest to succeed Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in November.

Bloomberg got just 20 per cent in that poll, but two things are in his favour. Bill Clinton says he is not running. And Michael Bloomberg has zillions of dollars to throw around. If he succeeds, he wouldn't be the first mega-rich Wall Street type to spend his way into public office - former Goldman Sachs chief executive Jon Corzine splashed out $63 million to win a US Senate seat in New Jersey last year.

The son of a book-keeper in blue-collar Boston, Michael Bloomberg made his fortune through getting the sack. After 15 years with Salomon, he was shown the door with a $10 million (€8.8 million) pay-off. He used this to start a company providing financial data.

In 1990 this became the Bloomberg business wire service, which supplied terminals to market traders around the world, enabling them to slice and dice stock market information in myriad ways.

Bloomberg News has expanded into a global media powerhouse, with 7,000 employees, 79 bureaux, a seven-language satellite television network, a syndicated radio station and four magazines.

As two-thirds owner, Bloomberg is worth $4 billion, making him No 61 on Forbes list of richest Americans.

While he likes to belittle his achievements - he says "The information business is exactly the opposite of sex; when it is good, it is still lousy" - Bloomberg has a reputation for driving his workers hard. In the late 1990s he faced three charges of sexually harassing female employees. One case was dismissed, another withdrawn and a third settled.

In preparation for the mayoral campaign, he has stepped down as chairman of his limited partnership company, though he will not leave as chief executive until he declares his candidacy in two months.

Bloomberg is quitting the company at a critical time. Reuters, which dominates European data services, is challenging Bloomberg's closed system in the US with a Web-access alternative which will enable the London-based rival news and data service to reach more clients.

If he gets the Republican nomination, Bloomberg will find the rough and tumble of New York politics very different from the boardroom. New York isn't New Jersey and money may not be enough to secure his new career as chief executive of the Big Apple. Cosmetic heir Ronald Lauder found this out when blowing $12 million in an unsuccessful run against Mr Giuliani in 1989. Mr Bloomberg also still lags far behind Democratic front-runner Mark Green.

So he is refining his image a bit. He delivered meals-on-wheels to an elderly couple in Harlem, which was well publicised, though he protested to the New York Times that it was "absolute bull" to suggest he was electioneering. He is, in fact, something of a philanthropist. Last year he gave more than $100 million to 500 groups, ranging from Johns Hopkins University to the Gay Men's Health Crisis.

A life-long Democrat who hosted an election night party for Hillary Clinton at Elaine's Italian eatery, he has to get over switching suddenly to the Republican Party, a move he admitted candidly was due to expediency as he had little chance of winning the overcrowded Democratic primary. Calling himself a social liberal and a fiscal conservative, he hopes to fall back on former Mayor Fiorello La Guardia's successful election slogan: "There is no Republican or Democratic way to clean the streets."