Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, will serve at Bloomberg LP as the non-executive head of a board that is set to be almost entirely remade.POOL/Getty Images
Bloomberg LP has named former top Canadian central banker Mark Carney to chair a revamped board of directors, according to an internal memo that also describes an executive shuffle appointing a new CEO at the financial data and news company.
At Bloomberg, Mr. Carney – the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England who is currently board chair and head of transition investing at Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. – will serve as the non-executive head of a board that is set to be almost entirely remade. Most of Bloomberg’s existing board members will be given emeritus titles and new directors have yet to be named, according to a Monday company memo from founder and billionaire Michael Bloomberg obtained by The Globe and Mail.
Bloomberg also named Vlad Kliatchko as its chief executive officer, promoting him from his role as chief product officer. He will take on a job that was often ascribed to Mr. Bloomberg himself, even though he did not use the chief executive title and has spent considerable time on philanthropy and public causes.
JP Zammitt, who was chief operating officer and considered one of the front-runners to be CEO, will instead be president of Bloomberg LP, and Patti Roskill was named chief financial officer.
In the memo, Mr. Bloomberg, who is 81 and founded the company in 1981, sought to stamp out any speculation that the changes are a signal about approaching succession plans. He made it clear he intends to keep control of the company he built: “I’m not going anywhere,” he wrote to staff, adding that his title will still transcend the typical C-Suite roles: “just Mike.”
Bloomberg is a powerhouse in financial data and key provider of business news, delivered through computer terminals with proprietary software that have become ubiquitous on trading desks and widespread at global financial institutions. Those terminals, fed in part by Bloomberg News, are believed to bring in a large majority of Bloomberg’s billions of dollars in annual revenue.
But Mr. Bloomberg also cautioned that the company’s decades of consecutive growth “also risks complacency” and that “doing the same thing with the same people in the same way doesn’t work forever.”
Bloomberg spokesperson Ty Trippet declined to comment, and requests for comment from Mr. Carney were referred to Bloomberg.
The executive changes outlined in Mr. Bloomberg’s memo were first reported by The Information.
Mr. Carney is a high-profile appointment who already juggles his roles at Brookfield, which is one of the world’s largest asset managers, with an array of board and advisory board roles. A Brookfield spokesperson said his new directorship at Bloomberg will have no impact on his positions at Brookfield.
New members of Bloomberg’s board will be named “in short order,” Mr. Bloomberg said in the memo, without revealing who those directors will be. By landing Mr. Carney, Bloomberg has secured a well-connected chair who could serve as a magnet for talent.
Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Carney have worked together on climate finance initiatives, most notably as co-chairs of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, or GFANZ: a coalition of financial institutions that collectively manage US$140-trillion in assets that aims to align investment decisions with net-zero goals. And Mr. Carney already sits on the board Bloomberg Philanthropies, the umbrella organization that oversees Mr. Bloomberg’s charitable giving.
Mr. Carney is the United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action, and serves on the board of payments provider Stripe, Inc., the global advisory board of investment manager PIMCO, and advises a number of other organizations.
With his rare status as former governor of two G7 central banks and his prominent voice on climate transition and finance, Mr. Carney is also a significant newsmaker that Bloomberg News, the sprawling editorial arm of Bloomberg LP, will often have to cover.
He takes over the board chair role from Peter Grauer, who has led Bloomberg’s board for more than 20 years and will remain involved at the company, including on diversity initiatives.