MONEY has inspired artists from Abba to Ludacris to come up with pop hits. But not many financial journalists can say they inspired a song. But then not many financial journalists look like Maria Bartiromo.

With her smouldering eyes and bee-stung lips the CNBC television news presenter is often compared with the young Sophia Loren. And the Brooklyn-born beauty has proved equally hot on stories. The combination was powerful enough to inspire Joey Ramone, the man behind punk classics such as Teenage Lobotomy and Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue, to wax lyrical about day trading.

“What’s happening with Yahoo? What’s happening with AOL? I want to know,” sang Ramone, backed by his iconic three-chord thrash. “I watch you on the TV every single day. Those eyes make everything okay. I watch her every day. I watch her every night. She’s really outta sight. Maria Bartiromo, Maria Bartiromo, Maria Bartiromo.”

Ramone, now sadly dead, was not her only fan. Bartiromo moves the market in more ways than one and has delivered some impressive scoops. Last year the Dow Jones dropped 70 points after Bartiromo disclosed that the normally reticent Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, had told her that market reaction to his recent comments on American interest-rate policy had been wrong. She also broke the news that Sandy Weill was leaving Citigroup, having founded what is now the world’s largest financial-services group.

Now Bartiromo, 39, is breaking news at Citi again. Only this time she is the story.

Until last week Todd Thomson, 45, had been one of Citi’s highest flyers and headed the bank’s wealth- management unit. He was also a friend of Bartiromo’s, who is married to Jonathan Steinberg, a financial publisher and son of the colourful investor Saul Steinberg.

Rumours of clashes between Thomson and his boss, Chuck Prince, 56, have circulated for some time. The bank has been going through painful cost-cutting and Thomson was a notorious spender. His plush office on the 50th floor of Citigroup’s Manhattan offices overlooked Central Park and had an aquarium and a wood-burning fireplace. Internally it was known as the “Todd Mahal”.

Now it appears Thomson was just as lavish with the bank’s money when it came to cultivating contacts.

Last autumn Thomson flew Bartiromo back to New York from China on one of the company’s private jets. The trip has been estimated to have cost $50,000 (£25,500) and Thomson allegedly bumped senior Citi executives from the flight to be alone with the woman known as “the money honey”.

Bartiromo has been fully backed by CNBC. She disclosed the trip before taking it, telling her bosses it would be useful for building contacts.

Last week Bartiromo was at the centre of power again at the World Economic Forum in Davos. As criticism grew of her closeness to business leaders, CNBC, which has continued to promote her heavily, issued a statement of support. “Maria Bartiromo ... works tirelessly around the world in the service of business journalism. In 2006 alone, she made 46 public appearances on behalf of CNBC. Her travel has been company- related and approved, and involved legitimate business assignments. Her record and reporting speak for themselves,” it said.

But for Thomson the flight from Shanghai was the beginning of the end. Ever since the bank was pilloried for its role in the excesses of the dotcom boom, Citi has been hypersensitive about any appearances of impropriety.

After the stock-market collapse of 2000, Eliot Spitzer, the former New York attorney-general, dragged Citi and Weill’s reputations through the mud over a series of scandals. In one embarrassing episode a former star analyst, Jack Grubman, was accused of changing his rating on AT&T’s stock in return for Weill’s assistance in getting his children into a top Manhattan nursery school.

The scandals eventually cost Citi $5 billion in fines and court settlements and left a stain on Weill’s reputation.

Both Prince and Thomson had been close to Weill. When Prince took the top job, Thomson had been seen as a possible future chief executive. Now that chance has gone.

After the airplane incident, Prince reportedly warned Thomson not to spend Citigroup money on anything involving Bartiromo. Subsequently Thomson informed Prince that he had signed Citigroup up to a $5m sponsorship deal for a television show linked to the Sundance film festival that would feature Bartiromo and the festival’s founder, actor Robert Redford.

Sundance has become a magnet for the wealthy and is one of the highlights of the social calendar. Arguably it is an ideal hunting ground for Citi’s wealth- management business. But it proved too much for Prince. Last weekend he forced Thomson out.

Neither the bank nor CNBC returned calls seeking comment.

The costs of the flight and the sponsorship are trivial to an organisation the size of Citigroup, which has a market value of $269 billion. This month it announced it had earned $5.1 billion in the last quarter of 2006.

But, despite their size, the latest figures were a big disappointment to the bank and Wall Street. Prince has struggled to cut costs across Citigroup’s sprawling empire and the bank has lost ground in credit cards and consumer banking.

Last summer investors’ worries got a public airing when Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, Citigroup’s largest individual shareholder, told Reuters the bank should take “draconian” measures to control its costs.

Thomson’s high-flying jinks did little to show either prince that he meant business.