In May, the New York Times reported that the mayor lost his temper when asked about the lawsuit during a news conference on the city’s finances. “What does this have to do with the budget?’’ he snapped, although he had already expressed his thoughts on other subjects. “You’ll have to ask the company. And next time, don’t bother to ask us a question. Stick to the topic. Everybody else plays by the rules; you’ll just have to as well.’’

Call it the two faces of Michael Bloomberg. As mayor, he quickly gained a reputation for being a liberal-minded chief executive, admired by progressives and conservatives alike. Says the political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, “Here’s a billionaire who, some might say, does not have the common touch. But he has managed to win over the electorate in a town that eats its politicians for breakfast.”

During his two terms, Bloomberg has devoted energy and resources to certain causes that are important to women. He is strongly pro-choice, for instance, and has backed programs to combat domes­tic violence. He has also appointed more women to the upper echelons of city government—among them his top aide and closest confidante, former Bloomberg executive Patricia Harris—than any mayor in recent memory.

Ask almost any woman who works with him in his present incarnation for her opinion, and she will issue a glowing report. “Women’s issues are very, very important to him,” says Christine Quinn, the speaker of the New York City Council. “Maybe as a father of two daughters, who’s obviously a terrific son who very much loves his mom, he’s driven by the important role women have played in his life.”

The question, then, is what to make of that Michael Bloomberg in light of the statements of dozens of women who say they’ve been mistreated at his company—the other Bloomberg administration, as it were. The firm bears his stamp in nearly every conceivable way. Its corporate culture reflects the personality and predilections of the founder. The executives who run it in his absence were all chosen by him. In fact, the current president, Dan Doctoroff, was previously a deputy mayor in Bloomberg’s City Hall.

And yet, in the public mind, there seems to be a disconnect between the popular politician and the founder and guiding light of a corporation that has a reputation as a difficult place for pregnant women and new mothers to work.
 
In 1981, at the age of 39, Michael Bloomberg was himself jostled out of a job—squeezed out of a partnership at the Salomon Brothers brokerage house. Salomon was famous for being one of the most testosterone-driven firms on Wall Street at a time when the industry was a true rogues gallery. Salomon was also Bloomberg’s first and only professional home from the time he received his M.B.A. from Harvard at 24.

With the $10 million he received in severance from Salomon, Bloomberg started his company. The twin pillars of the Bloomberg corporate culture come straight from its founder: (1) long hours and total devotion to the job, with no room for distractions, and (2) the raunchy, swaggering, locker-room vibe that held sway at Salomon and inspired the “big swinging dick” archetype. While those attributes contributed to Bloomberg L.P.’s success, they also brought troubles in the form of lawsuits filed by disgruntled female employees and attendant negative publicity.

Things have changed since the days when Bloomberg ran the show with three colleagues in a one-room office. His company now employs about 10,000 people and was valued in August at around $23 billion, a figure based on the price the company then paid to buy back a 20 percent stake in itself from Merrill Lynch. It boasts a highly regarded news operation with outlets in print, television, and radio, but 95 percent of revenue comes from the business side, which designs, sells, and services the famous Bloomberg terminal. Thousands of bankers, traders, and investment managers all over the world use the terminal to analyze market data, stream news, and communicate electronically. For years, the funny little box with green and yellow keys, which is leased for about $1,500 a month, has been a critical tool for anyone doing business on Wall Street.

Michael Bloomberg’s famous bluntness and salty—sometimes downright crude—sense of humor typified the firm, especially in its early days. “He was always talking about my ass or my chest: ‘Oh, are they real?’ ” says a woman who worked for the company for 11 years. (She declined to be identified for this article.) “He was a goofy guy, always joking.”

Off-color banter was so much a part of his persona that one former company executive, Elisabeth DeMarse, put together a 32-page booklet of Mike witticisms as a gag gift for his birthday, according to New York magazine. The first quote read, “Make the customer think he’s getting laid when he’s getting fucked.”

“This is Bloomberg culture,” DeMarse had said weeks before the 2001 mayoral election. “You have to understand, Mike is very uncensored. When Mike says outrageous things, it’s sort of a test. It’s a loyalty test. It’s a bonding thing when everyone laughs. You stop thinking that it might be inappropriate.”