CNBC Defends Anchor and Her Citigroup Ties

By Geraldine Fabrikant

Bill Carter and Eric Dash contributed reporting.

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Late last year, an executive from Citigroup phoned an official connected with CNBC, the cable business news channel. According to people with knowledge of the call, the Citigroup executive made it clear that Maria Bartiromo, the popular CNBC anchor, would not be permitted to fly on the Citigroup’s corporate jet again.

Earlier that month, Todd Thomson, the head of Citigroup’s global wealth management group, had arranged for Bartiromo to speak to some Citigroup clients in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Bartiromo had then flown home with Thomson on the corporate jet, bumping several company bankers from the plane.

Officials at CNBC deny receiving a phone call telling them that Bartiromo would be barred from further flights.

Thomson was let go by Citigroup this past week. People close to the situation have said that there were concerns over his judgment, his expenses, the way he handled his public relationship with Bartiromo and his decision to make a multiyear sponsorship of $5 million in a program that she was assigned to co-host on the cable television network The Sundance Channel.

Bartiromo, by contrast, has the strong support of her employer.

CNBC, which had already said that her flight was preapproved and that Citigroup was compensated, issued a statement on Thursday that said she had not violated any of the channel’s ethical standards and called her “one of the most prolific and well-respected financial journalists in the industry.”

But the episode and other associations with Thomson have raised questions about her judgment in getting too close to those she covers.

CNBC executives dismissed any suggestions that inferences of favoritism or ethical breaches could be read into any of Bartiromo’s activities with Citigroup. Neither Thomson nor Bartiromo would comment for this article.

The episode comes at an awkward time for CNBC. After enduring a long ratings and advertising slump after the last bull market, the network has been on a run of its own, becoming a growing profit center for NBC Universal.

As CNBC’s most identifiable anchor, Bartiromo is often seen at corporate or political events. She spent this past week spearheading the network’s coverage from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Some of those events have put her in close proximity to Thomson and other Citigroup executives. According to one of last year’s guests at Davos, Bartiromo made the trip back to the United States on the Citigroup private jet on that occasion as well.

Bartiromo appeared at a Citigroup-sponsored awards event in London in 2005, co-hosting the event with another CNBC anchor Simon Hobbs.

Thomson represented Citigroup at the event.

One executive representing CNBC said that Bartiromo had made “no more than two” trips on the Citigroup jet. CNBC executives would not agree to be quoted by name for this article because they said they not did want to be seen as adding anything to what they considered an illegitimate article.

CNBC also denied that Bartiromo had any extraordinary involvement with Citigroup over other businesses.

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