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Goldman Sachs is mulling reducing its reliance on the ubiquitous Bloomberg LP terminals, The Post has learned.
Irked Goldman executives are weighing such a major move because they are still steamed about Bloomberg reporters using the data giant’s terminals to snoop on employees, sources said.
Goldman, sources said, is considering using encrypted Twitter accounts or creating such functions as a secure instant-messaging application that could be used within the trading community inside and outside of Goldman.
“There’s a lot of disruptive technology,” said one person familiar with Goldman’s thinking. “This [Bloomberg snooping] has given new energy to those ideas,” the person said.
Bloomberg, its sterling reputation already sullied by its Big Brother-like snooping, could be hurt again — on its bottom line — should Goldman follow through on its plan.
Bloomberg has admitted that its reporters had access to private terminal activity, such as when customers logged in and, broadly speaking, which functions they were accessing. It says it has recently disabled this function.
However, customers are still irked and seeking answers.
To be sure, Goldman — one of Bloomberg LP’s biggest clients — isn’t looking to entirely pull the plug on its Bloomberg terminal usage.
However, the big bank’s tech team has been talking to counterparts at Bloomberg over the past month about how the data provider uses Goldman’s client information.
Of particular concern is whether data being mined by Bloomberg to create products and services that compete directly with Goldman.
One such discussed product is Bloomberg’s “Tradebook,” a profitable broker-dealer created in the late 1990s to help create additional revenues for the company.
Goldman is trying to determine if Bloomberg has used the bank’s data to help drive business at Tradebook.
Even if Goldman doesn’t kick off its own Bloomberg-like services, it will look to be more “aggressive” in placing limits on how Bloomberg uses its data.
A Goldman spokesman declined to comment. Bloomberg did not return calls for comment.
In other news:
* The Federal Reserve and Treasury Dept. have intensified their probe into whether Bloomberg spied on officials at the agencies.
Officials are demanding that Bloomberg tell them what, if any, access its news team has to their use of terminals, sources said.
The Fed and Treasury are miffed that Bloomberg opted to initially work with Goldman to remedy its snooping habits rather than reaching out to all of its clients.
* Former SEC boss Harvey Pitt wants an independent review of the snooping and called Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief Matt Winkler’s apology not “very credible.”
* CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said he may soon have the authority to investigate such privacy breaches.
“In the future, should something like this occur, I can’t imagine we wouldn’t go after a firm like Bloomberg,” he told The Post. But any move by the CFTC would have to be “forward-looking, not backward-looking,” he said.