But I kept going back and I knew I had allies." And the bully? "No, I never won him over." He would yell at me 'don't come over here' and I was mortified. I remember one guy, he would intimidate me every day and I just hated this guy. I was a reporter - I had no place in the stock exchange. "There were a lot of people down there who just didn't want me there. Dick Grasso, who ran the exchange, was keen to demystify the stock market at a time when increasing numbers of ordinary Americans were investing. Her big break came when CNBC persuaded the NYSE to allow a journalist on to the trading floor for the first time. She began her career at CNN as a writer and producer on business news, where she worked for the presenter Lou Dobbs, and moved to CNBC as a reporter five years later. She majored in journalism at New York University and minored in economics. I mean 'hello money honey'? Of course not."īartiromo was raised in Brooklyn, where her father ran a restaurant. It's just something the tabloids came up with. "Everybody asks me as if it's like this thing I am supposed to get so upset about but I think it's terrific frankly. "I'm happy to have gotten noticed," she says. She bats away the inevitable money honey question with good grace. She is charming and attentive, her voice softer than her TV persona's. It is easy to see how Bartiromo, 38, wins over her interviewees and perhaps prompts the likes of Bernanke into indiscretions. By the end I am convinced she would have been perfectly happy to risk a dose of the sniffles. I err on the side of caution but probably need not have worried. I have a cold and ponder whether or not I should offer to shake her hand - by experience Americans tend toward the germophobic and she could have been, well, a little starry. She has come to London to attend a Google conference and interview the chief executive, Eric Schmidt. I meet her after she finishes a stint as a guest on the morning show of the European CNBC channel, from offices close to St Paul's. She has columns in BusinessWeek and Readers Digest, anchors the Closing Bell on CNBC (which can be seen on CNBC Europe weekdays at 8pm), hosts the Wall Street Journal report that appears on 200 American channels, has published a bestseller on investing and has her own syndicated radio show across the US. As she relayed his thoughts on air, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 70 points, causing a stir in Washington and teaching the new Fed chairman a lesson in dealing with the press. The chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, admitted recently that he had gaffed by telling her over dinner that the markets had misinterpreted some of his comments. He was, he sighed, the "envy of Wall Street" as he lunched with the "Sophia Loren of financial journalism".īartiromo also has uncommon access and an unusual power to move markets. Even a reporter in the normally po-faced Financial Times recently melted in her presence. She recently appeared as a guest on the Oprah Winfrey show and was dubbed the "money honey" by New York tabloids swooning over her looks, a moniker that has stuck. Bartiromo developed a cult-like following and attained a celebrity unheard of among financial journalists in Britain. With the US gripped by the dotcom boom, the channel briefly overtook CNN in the ratings. The first verse pretty much sums it up:įor a decade US viewers could watch Bartiromo amid the tumult on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, straining her voice to be heard as she delivered reports to camera for the business news channel CNBC, her 5ft 5in frame often jostled by burly traders. It's great, just great." The song was on Ramone's final album, released after his death from lymphoma in 2001. "Sure enough, the cameraman came back with the tape and there's him and his band with this song Maria Bartiromo and I just love it. I said, Joey, I'm sorry to tell you but I have to be on the air at 6am and I can't be anywhere at midnight except in my bed, so I didn't go." Instead, at Ramone's urging, she sent a camera crew. "He said to me Maria, I wrote a song about you and he said just come down to CBGBs in Manhattan, be there at midnight. She later found out just how much Ramone really was in her spell.
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