Bloomberg snooping scandal alerts China on data security

In an attempt to reassure customers, Daniel Doctoroff, chief executive officer and president of Bloomberg LP, blogged on Wednesday that its reporters "now have access to the same client information as any Bloomberg client."

It seems Bloomberg is yet another case of being "too big to fail."

As the world's leading financial information service provider, Bloomberg LP has over 315,000 subscribers to its financial terminals, mostly high-end clients such as government institutions, banks, corporations and news agencies.

The quality of data service available on Bloomberg terminals is high and it's hard to find a substitute for the product, said a former employee of a European bank's office in China, who declined to be named.

Xinhua emailed questions to a Bloomberg official in charge of corporate affairs on subscriptions to Bloomberg terminals in China, but has not received replies so far.

Bloomberg LP and its rival Thomson Reuters take up about 70 percent of the global financial data service market, according to Yu.

He said the Bloomberg snooping scandal highlights the need for China to develop its own financial information services as the country's financial industry becomes more integrated into the world market, "otherwise China' s economic and financial safety may be threatened."

However, China's own financial data services have a long way to go to rival its international counterparts because it's difficult to challenge the monopoly of Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters and their strong capability of data analysis, he added.