Reuters announces changes to banking team

Daniel Wilchins, deputy regional editor in charge of financial services coverage at Reuters, made the following staff announcement on Monday:

I’m pleased to announce a series of new beats and hires for the banking team in New York:

Lauren Tara LaCapra, our team leader, will cover the intersection of technology and the financial sector starting today. Her beat will look at everything from electronic payments to cyber security at banks to peer-to-peer lending. Lauren started covering Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for us in 2011, and has produced an unremitting stream of awesome stories months ahead of her competitors. She was the first to report how major Wall Street banks were moving staff to cheaper U.S. cities like Salt Lake City and Dallas; the first to write about a series of layoffs at Goldman Sachs, and has continually beat competitors in describing Morgan Stanley’s efforts to pare back and ramp up in bond trading. She has been covering banks and high finance since 2008. Lauren has an intense affinity for anything with a leopard print, and lives in Williamsburg with her partner Geoff and her dogs Captain and Tallulah.

Olivia Oran is moving from the M&A team to cover Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, effective July 13. Olivia has been a pillar of our mergers coverage since joining us in 2012 to cover initial public offerings and later retail and healthcare M&A. She was first to report that tobacco companies Reynolds American and Lorillard were in takeover talks for a $27 billion merger, and that U.S. drugmaker AbbVie was in talks to buy Shire for $53 billion. She also broke that Shake Shack was preparing for an initial public offering. Olivia is a reformed banker, having started her career as an analyst at JPMorgan in their technology, media, and telecom group, and when she’s not breaking news, she’s hosting multi-course dinner parties that put Martha Stewart to shame.

Dan Freed joins us today to cover Bank of America and Wells Fargo. He has been covering Wall Street for more than 15 years, most recently for TheStreet. He was the first to report secret discussions between JPMorgan and Santander over possible acquisitions during the crisis, how reclusive billionaire Bill Erbey made a fortune off mortgage pain at big banks, and how Jimmy Lee almost went to work at Blackstone Group, among other great scoops. Before he was a journalist, he spent two years in Spain and Central America learning Spanish and teaching English. In his free time, he is fond of riding a bicycle for two around Brooklyn with his eight-year-old daughter Simona.

Lawrence Delevingne joins us from CNBC.com, where he covered hedge funds and private equity firms. He will be writing longer-form stories on hedge funds, working closely with Svea Herbst, Jennifer Ablan, and other reporters and editors here who cover that space. While at CNBC.com, Lawrence generated dozens of great scoops and narrative stories, chronicling the failure of hedge funds Everest, Common Sense and FX Concepts, and writing profiles of billionaire investor Leon Cooperman and Bruce Wrobel, the former head of a power company owned by Blackstone who committed suicide. That last story won him a SABEW “Best in Business” award. Before he was a journalist, he spent a year living in Dakar while studying at Georgetown.  He still likes to practice his Wolof in Little Senegal, the Harlem neighborhood that he and his wife call home.

Please join me in welcoming Olivia, Dan and Lawrence to the team, and congratulating Lauren on her new beat.