He is the former mayor of New York City and a billionaire who considered running for president against Donald Trump.

But when it comes to his treatment of women, Michael Bloomberg has a far less admirable history, a new biography claims.

Bloomberg was once accused of telling a female employee to 'kill it' when she revealed she was pregnant, journalist Eleanor Randolph claims in a new biography, which also details sexist jokes and sayings which were so prolific, a joke compendium of them was passed around his employees.

In The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg: Innovation, Money, and Politics, released on September 10, she says he once joked that he preferred working 14-hour days than staying home and talking to his longtime partner Diana Taylor about 'feelings'.

Bloomberg reportedly said of one female employee that 'I'd do her' in a deposition - and was accused by another of calling women 'meat'.

A new book makes shocking claims about former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, claiming in public he was inscrutable but in private he could be 'raunchy with a full repertoire of old jokes that were sometimes edgy and sometimes slipped over the edge'

Staff at his financial information company Bloomberg LP even compiled a book of Bloombergian 'wisdom', which included the line: 'If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they'd go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale's', the upscale department store.

Randolph writes that Bloomberg, 77, called his jokes 'Borscht Belt standbys' and his aides dismissed them as 'blunders'.

They appear to have made little difference to him accumulating a fortune valued by Forbes at $55.2 billion, making him the ninth richest person in the world.

In a statement to DailyMail.com, a Bloomberg spokesperson said: 'People should buy the book and read it for themselves to see why historian Doris Kearns Goodwin calls it a "first rate study of leadership in business, politics and philanthropy."'

'As stated in the book, these charges were either denied or dismissed many years ago,' the spokesperson added.

Bloomberg himself is so keen on the book, he is sending it to friends, urging them to read it, Axios reported Tuesday.

Bloomberg was initially best known for the Bloomberg Terminal software for traders which revolutionized Wall Street by giving users much faster information - the annual subscription is now $24,000 a year per unit.

Bloomberg LP has expanded to include a news wire service, a TV channel and a philanthropic arm which has so far given away more than $8billion of his fortune.

Since then Bloomberg has become New York mayor, overturned the city's term limits law to hold the post for a third term, switched from Republican to Democrat, considered and ruled out running for the presidency more than once, and become his adopted party's biggest single donor with $120million in cash - as well as the country's biggest single funder of anti-gun campaigns.

He has collected homes in New York City, Westchester County, the Hamptons, London and the Bahamas, amassed an assortment of private jets and helicopters, and an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth.

The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg published by Simon & Schuster will be available on September 10

He opposed Donald Trump's 2016 election but still found time to call him and offer blunt advice when he won.

It is a long way from Medford, a suburb of Boston, where Bloomberg grew up as the son of an American-Jewish family.

His teachers regarded him as 'argumentative' and girls thought he was the 'biggest nerd', but his hard work paid off and he got into Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where he studied engineering.

Bloomberg's coldly pragmatic mind was on show in 1963, when John F Kennedy was assassinated.

The young Bloomberg had booked the gym for a fraternity dance, but the nation was in mourning so the event was canceled - which upset him more than losing the president.

Looking back decades later - he still hadn't got over it - he said: 'We had spent all our budget hiring James Brown and the Flames to play and then Kennedy got shot and we canceled the dance and couldn't get our deposit back. Never got the deposit back.

'It was like the death of Princess Diana....nothing changed, no matter what anybody else says'.

Bloomberg studied at Harvard Business School before heading to Wall Street in the mid 1960s, a world Randolph describes as 'fast, mean, ugly, risk, obscene and seductive' with 'temptations everywhere'.

He was hired by Salomon Brothers where his first job was counting bonds in the vault in his underwear with no air conditioning and six packs of beer for refreshment.

Bloomberg worked his way up to the trading floor which at the time still had spittoons on the floor, cigar smoke everywhere and people greeting each other with 'f*** you' as if it was hello.

One trader described it as an 'adult kindergarten' but Bloomberg became harder as a person.

When a colleague asked for time off for his grandfather's funeral, Bloomberg told him it was going to be a busy day, adding: 'Would you mind having them change the funeral?'

Bloomberg later apologized but his 'instant reaction was to focus on the sale, not on the humans around him', Randolph writes.

The 77-year-old is worth $55.2billion, making him the ninth richest person in the world, and was initially known for revolutionizing Wall Street in the 90s, pictured in his New York City office in 1997

Randolph claims he once joked that he preferred working 14 hour days than staying home and talking to his longtime partner Diana Taylor about 'feelings'

Bloomberg has two daughter's, Georgina (left) and Emma (right) with his ex-wife Susan Brown Meyer (not pictured)

After being made a partner at Salomon, Bloomberg embraced his wealth and began his lifelong love affair with private jets - he is a licensed pilot to this day.

According to the book, he boasted about having a 'girl in every city' until he met Salomon secretary Susan Meyer, a Brit who he married in 1976.

They had two daughters but she later discovered that Bloomberg was already married to his job and they grew apart and split after 17 years.

Bloomberg has said that the only two bad days in his life were when his mother died and when his father died.

Journalist Eleanor Randolph makes these claims in her new book The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg published by Simon & Schuster

Randolph quotes an associate who helpfully suggests that there may have been a third - the day his wife left him.

According to Randolph, Bloomberg 'scoffed' at the idea of getting married again but found love with Diana Taylor, a financial executive with whom he has been in relationship since 2000.

Even she couldn't escape his off-color humor and in an interview on Bloomberg Television he made the gag about returning to work rather than 'stay home and talk to Diana about feelings'.

For good measure he added: 'If that doesn't get you back to work I don't know what would.'

Salomon let Bloomberg go in 1981 with a $10million payoff which he used to start up his own company and poached three talented young colleagues to do it.

Their early prototype of the Bloomberg Terminal, called the Market Master, looked like an old cathode ray TV but it was enough to convince Merrill Lynch to invest $30million - and it took off.

Bloomberg's timing was perfect as computers were coming of age and trading volumes were becoming so large paper couldn't keep up.

By 1990, the company had sold 8,000 terminals as Bloomberg put in 14-hour days and obsessed over little details, admitting that when he saw disused paper on the floor he 'wanted to scream'.

He did not suffer fools at all and admitted that 'I tend to break phones all the time' because he slammed them down in a rage.

After leaving office in 2013, Bloomberg considered running for president in 2016 when Donald Trump (pictured in 2013 with Bloomberg and Jared Kushner) became the Republican candidate, but backed out, calling Trump a 'con man.' He then toyed with a 2020 run and again declined

Bloomberg served three terms as New York City mayor, pictured being sworn in in 2010 with his daughters Emma (left) and Georgina (right) for the third time, having overcome term limits laws

In the book, Randolph writes it would be too simple to describe Bloomberg as a 'two-dimensional, Wall Street macho guy' but as Bloomberg LP grew, issues with women kept coming up.

In public he was inscrutable but in private he could be 'raunchy with a full repertoire of old jokes that were sometimes edgy and sometimes slipped over the edge', Randolph writes.

She talks about Bloomberg's 'easy patter about women's cleavage' and 'proclamations that females need to wear high heels.'

In the mid 1990s, four women filed sexual harassment suits against Bloomberg LP including sales executive Sekiko Garrison, who claimed Bloomberg told her to 'kill' her unborn baby.

He was supposedly fed up over the fact that she was the 16th woman at the firm to go on maternity leave.

Before that, Bloomberg saw her engagement ring and allegedly said to her: 'What, is the guy dumb and blind? What the hell is he marrying you for?'

After a week he came back and allegedly said: 'Still engaged? What, is he that good in bed, or did your father pay him off to get rid of you?'

It was Garrison who Bloomberg supposedly said he would 'do' but he later claimed he meant have a personal relationship with her.

Bloomberg has always denied making the comments but ultimately settled with Garrison because he felt the suit could 'disrupt the company's focus.'

In a statement, Bloomberg LP told DailyMail.com that Bloomberg had denied saying 'kill it,' taken a lie detector test and passed.

In 2007, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Bloomberg LP and claimed that the company 'fostered and perpetuated' a hostile environment for women.

The federal lawsuit, filed on behalf of 78 women, was thrown out by a judge four years later, although some claims were allowed to continue, with the case eventually ending in 2015.

'[Chief] Judge [Loretta] Preska would dismiss charges of discrimination against Bloomberg in a sweeping and pointed sixty-four page order,' Randolph writes.

Bloomberg was proud when he launched the Financial Services Gender-Equality Index with voluntary submissions from companies to show they were achieving gender equality.

Bloomberg succeeded Rudy Giuliani as Mayor of New York City with a plan to lift New York out of its post 9/11

During his campaign, Bloomberg came under fire when his opponent brought attention to The Portable Bloomberg - a book compiling quips he's made to staff over the years - in which he described the British Royal family as 'a bunch of misfits - a gay, an architect, that horsey faced lesbian, and a kid who gave up Koo Stark for some fat broad'

By 2018 more than 100 were submitting their numbers. There was a notable exception, Bloomberg LP, which handily was excluded because it is a privately-held company.

Bloomberg's ambitions expanded beyond Bloomberg LP and, having toyed with a presidential run, he ran for mayor of New Yorkdf in 2001.

During his campaign Bloomberg's record on women came under the spotlight again when his Democratic rival pounced on 'The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg'.

The book, created in-house at his firm, was a compilation of quips Bloomberg had supposedly made to staff over the years, and none of them were flattering.

According to Randolph and multiple reports at the time, one of them was: 'The (British) Royal family - what a bunch of misfits - a gay, an architect, that horsey faced lesbian, and a kid who gave up Koo Stark for some fat broad.'

Bloomberg also supposedly said: 'The three biggest lies are: the check's in the mail, I'll respect you in the morning, and I'm glad I'm Jewish.'

Another one-liner was: 'I know for a fact that any self-respecting woman who walks past a construction site and doesn't get a whistle will turn around and walk past again and again until she does get one.'

Randolph claims that this 'undeniably rough talk' was 'largely forgotten' by the media.

Bloomberg LP told DailyMail.com the collection was 'not meant to be direct quotes,' but Elisabeth DeMarse, the one-time Bloomberg aide who compiled it, told New York magazine in 2001 precisely the opposite, saying: 'These are his lines. Everything in there I've heard him say many times. I sat next to him for seven years.'

Nonetheless, Randolph points out that Bloomberg has elevated women to the highest levels of Bloomberg LP, especially Patti Harris who he regards as one of his closest confidants and who now runs Bloomberg Philanthropies.

New York city speaker Christine Quinn, who ran to succeed Bloomberg as mayor, claimed that he once made a crass joke about her age and her appearance

She told Randolph: 'I've worked for him for 25 years, and woman have always been in senior leadership roles.

'Anyone who works hard and performs well is going to be rewarded, regardless of gender or race or sexual orientation or anything else.'

The company website now boasts a section on 'advancing women,' with a quote from Bloomberg himself and details on its plans to promote women inside the company, and help them in areas including economic development and maternal health through its philanthropic arm.

In 2019, he also announced to employees the expansion of the company's paid parental leave policy from 18 to 26 weeks.

Certainly, the crass Bloombergisms did not hurt him at the polls in 2001.

New York voters backed Bloomberg as the Republican mayoral candidate, with the billionaire taking over from Rudy Giuliani in 2002 with a plan to lift New York out of its post-9/11 financial crisis, when it seemed likely that the financial services sector could flee what seemed a vulnerable city.

Bloomberg spent a staggering $73million of his own money on the campaign, or $98 for each of the 744,000 votes, a sum which looked more befitting of a presidential campaign.

Bloomberg would serve three terms as mayor of New York with a mixed record with critics saying he was too business friendly and failed minorities, especially on policing.

He became known as the 'Nanny Mayor' for trying to ban soda and guns, a campaign he took the national stage when he sued 27 out-of-state gun dealers.

Bloomberg tried and failed to bring in a congestion charge to New York - it now appears to be moving ahead under a combination of his successor, Bill de Blasio and the state's governor Andrew Cuomo - but he did successfully ban trans fats in foods and smoking in bars - a move copied around the world.

While in office, Bloomberg's Borscht Belt routine kept coming.

He once called the American Irish Historical Society a place where 'a bunch of people that are totally inebriated' hang from the balcony.

He compared the teacher's union to the NRA at a time when he was trying to reform the city's education system.

'Do you pay a lot to make your hair be two colors? Because now it's three with the gray,' the author claims Bloomberg asked Christine Quinn, then speaker of New York City Council. They're pictured together during 2012's Pride March in New York City

At a holiday party in New York for the city's gay media elite, Bloomberg said: 'I haven't seen so many guys since there was a Ricky Martin book signing.'

Bloomberg showed off his pink sweater and added: 'You should see what's in my closet.'

In an article for New York Magazine, former New York city speaker Christine Quinn, who unsuccessfully ran to succeed Bloomberg as mayor, claimed that he once made a crass joke about her age and her appearance.

He allegedly said: 'Do you pay a lot to make your hair be two colors? Because now it's three with the gray.'

According to the article, Bloomberg had once gestured to a woman in a tight gown and told the male journalist who wrote the piece: 'Look at the a** on her.'

After leaving office in 2013 Bloomberg again considered running for the presidency in 2016 when Donald Trump became the Republican candidate.

He backed out from running as an independent and feared that his obituary would be that he was the guy who got Trump, a man with whom had been repeatedly photographed, elected.

Bloomberg considered it again in 2018 - this time for the Democratic ticket - but decided not to run and sharply criticized Trump in public, saying that 'I know a con man when I see one.'

According to Randolph, Bloomberg spoke to the president on the phone after his 2016 victory and 'counseled Trump to hire people smarter than himself, which Bloomberg's supporters decided could not be all that difficult.'

Bloomberg supposedly told Trump: 'Look, Donald, you don't know anything about this job.'

One billionaire to another, Bloomberg told the president-elect that he had to choose smart people to surround him and give him good advice.

He told him: 'You can't walk away from how our government has developed over 100, 200 years and say it's all bulls***' - advice Trump appears to have completely ignored.