Maria Bartiromo, one of the first women to become a star on television by reporting on business news, is leaving her longtime home at CNBC after 20 years for its rival, the Fox Business Network.
CNBC President and Chief Executive Mark Hoffman announced Bartiromo's departure in a memo to employees on Monday and said the 46-year-old will leave the company when her contract expires on Nov. 24.
"After twenty great years of having a front row seat to some of the most important economic stories in the world, it's hard to sum up the gratitude and appreciation I have for the team that helped make it happen," Bartiromo said in a statement. "I am incredibly proud of what we have been able to accomplish."
According to New York Times, a Fox spokeswoman said she didn't have any announcement to make on Bartiromo on Monday. Bartiromo joined CNBC in 1993 after five years as a producer and assignment editor with CNN Business News. Bartiromo became the first journalist to report daily live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
"She has been at the center of every major financial and business news story, working hard for CNBC, since her earliest days fighting it out on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in the mid-90s," Hoffman said in the memo obtained by Reuters.
Nicknamed the "Money Honey," she was the anchor on CNBC's "Closing Bell," which aired for two hours during the week, and a half-hour show on Sundays called "On the Money." Bartiromo won an Emmy Award for a documentary on Google.
In 2007, Bartiromo was in the news for her ties to a senior Citigroup executive who spent $5 million of corporate funds to sponsor a show on the Sundance Channel that would include Bartiromo as a host. Bartiromo has won two Emmy awards and written several books as well as columns for magazines and newspapers, including USA Today. She's married to Jonathan Steinberg, the CEO of ETF provider WisdomTree Investments.
According to the Times, Fox Business averaged fewer than 10,000 viewers, those between the ages of 25 and 54. CNBC had more than three times as many with 31,000.
