More Clients Ask Questions of Bloomberg

With new concerns emerging about practices at its news division, Bloomberg L.P., the sprawling financial services company founded by Michael R. Bloomberg, scrambled to shield its lucrative terminal business and appease nervous customers.

The report on Friday that a Bloomberg reporter had used the company’s financial data terminals to monitor a Goldman Sachs partner’s logon activity has set off a ripple effect of inquiries from other worried subscribers, including JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and the European Central Bank.

The revelations now stretch back to 2011, when UBS complained after a Bloomberg Television host alluded on air to his monitoring of the London-based rogue UBS trader Kweku Adoboli’s terminal logon information to confirm his employment status at the bank. Then, last summer, executives at JPMorgan Chase questioned Bloomberg reporters’ techniques after they were among the first to report on the trader Bruno Iksil, nicknamed the London Whale. “I’m unaware of any record of a complaint from either bank on this issue,” said Ty Trippet, a Bloomberg spokesman. The fallout continued on Monday. Bloomberg has now received roughly 20 inquiries about whether reporting practices violated the company’s policies about getting access to subscriber information, including one from Bank of America. The bank also contacted Bloomberg to raise questions about the security of its employees’ private information, people briefed on the matter said.

Citigroup and other Wall Street banks have also contacted Bloomberg in recent days, according to these people, who spoke on the condition they not be identified discussing confidential conversations. The banks all declined to comment. In response, the company has been contacting subscribers.

“Since the news came out, my executive team and I have personally reached out to more than 300 clients,” Daniel L. Doctoroff, chief executive of Bloomberg L.P., wrote in a blog post late Monday night. “We started each conversation with an apology.” A person briefed on those conversations said no one immediately canceled their subscription.

Every Bloomberg user who logs onto a terminal is greeted with a screen that contains a letter from Mr. Doctoroff calling the practice a “mistake” and addressing privacy concerns. The company is preparing a blog where subscribers can discuss concerns about data security. Bloomberg subscribers pay on average about $20,000 a year to lease each terminal.

Mr. Bloomberg, who stepped away from day-to-day operations when he became mayor, declined to comment on the situation at the company that bears his name. “No, I can’t say anything. I have an agreement with the Conflict of Interests Board,” he said in a news conference on Monday.

The company also began to discuss possible legal ramifications. While people close to the company doubted that clients would threaten legal action, Bloomberg hired outside lawyers on Friday to steer it through the crisis. The lawyers, according to the people close to the company, have assured Bloomberg that there is no basis for a lawsuit, since the subscribers did not suffer any damages and the information obtained was more trivial than confidential. An early analysis conducted by Bloomberg further suggested that reporters rarely, if ever, published stories based solely on information gleaned from the terminals.

The people close to the company also noted that Bloomberg’s sales agreement with subscribers disclosed that company employees had access to certain private information. While the agreement did not specify that Bloomberg News reporters were among those with access, the journalists are technically employees of Bloomberg L.P.

But some bank executives said the snooping could have violated a common confidentiality clause in their contracts with Bloomberg. In the clause, Bloomberg promises to keep large swaths of information “in confidence,” meaning that it won’t be shared with “third parties.”

One Wall Street executive, who asked not to be named because of a firm policy prohibiting employees from speaking to the media, said his company was involved in a sensitive situation last year and he now wondered if reporters were monitoring his activities.

Susanne Craig and Jack Ewing contributed reporting.

DealBook: Twitter Arrives on Wall Street, Via Bloomberg

Eric Owles/The New York TimesMeta much? A Bloomberg terminal displays a Twitter message about a DealBook article on Bloomberg’s use of Twitter.

Largely blocked on Wall Street, Twitter is making its big debut on trading desks — via Bloomberg terminals.

Bloomberg L.P. announced on Thursday that it was incorporating tweets into its data service, which is widely used in the financial industry. The new feature allows traders and other professionals to monitor social media buzz and important news about companies they follow.

This arrival of Twitter comes through something of a side door. The big Wall Street banks largely ban the use of Twitter and other social media sites at work, citing regulations governing communication. Though some firms are allowing certain employees onto social media, that usage is carefully controlled.

Now, bank employees are getting a broader and more organized view of what’s being said in the Twittersphere. Some on Wall Street already use their mobile phones to monitor the site for information that could move stocks.

Bloomberg’s new service shows tweets sorted by company and topic, allowing users to search by key word and to set up alerts for when a particular company is getting an unusual amount of attention.

“We were getting requests from customers who were seeing news they wanted to be aware of on Twitter,” said Brian Rooney, core products manager for news at Bloomberg, who said that compliance officers from Wall Street banks had expressed an interest in allowing employees to see tweets.

But Mr. Rooney added: “This isn’t where you monitor The Onion or Ashton Kutcher.”

Rather, Bloomberg will show tweets from companies, chief executives and other news-makers, in addition to certain economists and financial bloggers. Mr. Rooney cited the economist Nouriel Roubini and Paul Kedrosky, the investor and blogger, as examples.

It’s not uncommon these days for news to surface on Twitter, even before the wire services carry it. This week, the Securities and Exchange Commission outlined rules for disseminating corporate information via social media outlets like Twitter.

“It just seems like there’s been a tipping point where more companies are using Twitter and other social media to put out announcements,” said Ted Merz, news content business manager at Bloomberg. “That’s evidenced by what the S.E.C. put out.”

City Room: Crime Is Up, and Bloomberg Blames iPhone Thieves

Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

Updated, 11:50 a.m. | Hold onto your iPhones!

Major crime in New York City inched up this year, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Friday fingered the culprit: too many iPhones and iPads were being swiped.

A rise in thefts of shiny Apple products accounted for the slight increase in the city’s annual crime index, a statistic that covers a number of felonies, including murder, grand larceny and robbery, Mr. Bloomberg said on Friday morning during his weekly radio show.

As of Monday, the Police Department recorded 3,484 more major crimes in 2012 than for the same period last year. The increase in Apple product thefts: 3,890.

In a more serious vein, Mr. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly also announced that as of Friday morning, New York City had recorded 414 homicides, putting it on pace to record the lowest annual number since the city started tracking comparable homicide figures in 1963. The current low, 471 homicides, was set in 2009.

Still, city officials said the overall crime figure was skewed by the Apple figure.

“If you just took away the jump in Apple, we’d be down for the year,” said Marc La Vorgna, the mayor’s press secretary.

On the radio, Mr. Bloomberg said that Apple products appeared to be the preference for many thieves, noting that he was not including thefts of competing devices, like the Samsung Galaxy, in his count.

And he offered some practical advice for listeners, urging them to keep their devices in an interior, hard-to-reach pocket.

“Put it in a pocket in sort of a more body-fitting, tighter clothes, that you can feel if it was — if somebody put their hand in your pocket, not just an outside coat pocket,” the mayor said.

IPhones have long proved irresistible to city thieves, particularly on the subway, where crime rates shot up in 2011 after police investigators discovered that robbers were targeting the expensive, high-tech gadgets. The Police Department has used dozens of decoy officers and unusual methods to try to stanch the thefts, which usually occurred as trains entered and left stations, allowing for a quick getaway.

“The proliferation of people carrying expensive devices around is so great,” Mr. La Vorgna said. “It’s something that’s never had to be dealt with before.”

Through Monday, the city had recorded 108,432 major crimes for the year, up from 104,948 over the same period in 2011, a rise of 3.3 percent.