Seconds Out... Sell

'Raging Bull' comes to the City as Bloomberg prepares to put sales staff in the boxing ring. Jason Nissé reports

In a week when a judge attacked aggressive management at a City broker, one office in the Square Mile is poised to recreate its own version of the film Raging Bull.

Bloomberg, the financial information company founded by the current Mayor of New York, Mike Bloomberg, is planning to install a boxing ring in its offices at Finsbury Square in the City.

The ring will be used as a training arena where sales people are encouraged to win customers by "cold calling" - phoning potential clients without any prior introduction. According to a memo sent around Bloomberg's sales team, the company said construction would start on the office's second floor as soon as a designer could be found, but that the ring would have a "scoreboard and a hanging mike, just like a real boxing ring".

The initiative is the brainchild of Lex Fenwick, the flamboyant manager who became chief executive of Bloomberg when the founder went off to run New York City.

Mr Fenwick is famed for wearing purple suits and adopting radical management techniques. These include embracing "orange" as the colour for Bloomberg business and having new-age slogans on the backs of business cards, such as "For you, from me" and "One source, infinite answers".

A Bloomberg spokesman said that the boxing ring was "just another example of how we are trying to think differently and innovatively".

This innovative approach has helped the company to grow exponentially in recent years, causing massive problems at its larger competitor Reuters, which has fallen into losses.

Staff at Bloomberg already enjoy the perk of a free canteen and coffee bar in the office's reception. This had to be moved to the first floor of the building because people were wandering in off the street and helping themselves to coffee, soft drinks and sandwiches.