Woman moves to the top: editor-in-chief at the "Financial Times"

He interviewed Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Hassan Rohani and Vladimir Putin, drove the prestigious business paper 2015 by changing ownership of the British Pearson Media Group to the Japanese media company Nikkei and transformed the "Financial Times" newsroom into a digital company. With the beginning of next year, Lionel Barber now retires as editor-in-chief of the Financial Times, the newspaper said. He will then have worked for the newspaper for 34 years.

"It was our greatest privilege to work with Lionel," said Tsuneo Kita, board member of Nikkei. The "Financial Times" had never before been more important than under Barber. He described his job as the best in journalism. "When I took over the editorial team, I wanted to restore the gold standard in reporting and commenting on FT and help build a sustainable profitable business based on digital transformation." These goals were achieved together with Nikkei.

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Lionel Barber was Editor-in-Chief of the Financial Times for 14 years

Barber began his journalistic career in 1978 with the Scottish newspaper The Scotsman before joining the Sunday Times. In 1985, he joined the Financial Times as a business reporter, went to Washington for the newspaper in 1986 and reported from Brussels in 1992. He then became news editor and led the Europe edition of "FT" from 2000 to 2002, subsequently becoming US managing editor before being appointed editor-in-chief in London in 2005.

Roula Khalaf has been appointed the next editor of the Financial Times, succeeding Lionel Barber, who stepped down on Tuesday after a 14-year tenure https://t.co/JOrg2d71io pic.twitter.com/rO22BeZPyp

Barber's successor will be his former deputy Roula Khalaf, who has worked for the Financial Times for 24 years. "I am confident that she will continue the FT mission to deliver quality journalism without fear and favor, to inspire and lead a team of the most talented journalists, and to continue the FT's new agenda in the areas of business, finance, economics and world affairs "said Nikkei CEO Tsuneo Kita.

Khalaf began her career at the "FT" in 1995 as a North African correspondent, previously working for Forbes magazine in New York. In 2016, she was named Foreign Commentator of the Year at the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards. Her series on Qatar won the 2013 Feature Story of the Year award from the Foreign Press Association.