This post has been corrected.
Michael Bloomberg, the media kingpin and businessman who served as mayor of New York for three terms ending in 2013, may take a crack at getting the same job in London, according to several unnamed “friends” cited in the British press.
The Sunday Times reported that Bloomberg, who is 73 and has a number of ties with the UK, including an ex-wife and two daughters with British citizenship, was “considering” running for mayor in the capital next year, with the political backing of the Conservative Party.
The current mayor is Boris Johnson, who has been tipped as a likely challenger to David Cameron, the current prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party, who is facing an election in a month and has already declared that he won’t run for a third term should he be in government again.
There would be some obstacles to Bloomberg’s election as mayor of London. The first is that he is not a British citizen, a necessity under the current rules, and a notoriously difficult process that takes three years for people with a British spouse, and five years otherwise—if it is granted at all.
Money helps; the process can be expedited if an individual has invested more that £2 million ($3 million) in the UK. The newspaper said that Bloomberg, the 16th-richest person in the world, has invested £500 million in Britain so far.
Bloomberg’s “friends” have a history of suggesting him for high-up positions, most notably president of the United States. A spokeswoman for Bloomberg, where Michael Bloomberg reassumed the role of CEO late last year, said that the company was not commenting on the rumour.
She directed Quartz to the Twitter page of Howard Wolfson, formerly deputy mayor of New York and now of the Bloomberg Foundation, and a longterm collaborator of Michael Bloomberg’s, who tweeted on April 4th:
Correction (April 6th): An earlier version of this article stated that Boris Johnson had a US passport, which is no longer the case.