Bloomberg Picks Asset Manager

At the request of the city's Conflicts of Interest Board, Bloomberg LP, the financial information company the mayor founded, also provided its top 100 customers as of Dec. 31, 2007.

The list includes corporate giants such as Bank of America, Bank of China, Bear Stearns, Barclays, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Jefferies & Co.

Bloomberg's selection of Quadrangle allows the private asset firm to act as a layer between his own investments and those of the Bloomberg Family Foundation so there are no conflicts of interest.

Bloomberg sought an opinion from the board because he wanted to put his money in a greater variety of investments than the mutual funds and exchange-traded funds originally approved by the board in 2002.

Those could include commodities, currencies, real estate, hedge funds, private equity funds, and traditional investments like fixed income and equity securities.

The board has said discussions with the investment firm should not be about specific investments but about the performance of money managers as well as broad sectors and categories of investments.

Quadrangle Asset Management is part of the Quadrangle Group LLC, a private investment firm with more than $6 billion under management.

The mayor's wealth was estimated by Forbes magazine at $11.5 billion.