Bloomberg taps two new leaders for Americas credit coverage

Shannon Harrington, executive editor for credit at Bloomberg News, sent out the following on Thursday morning:

All: We are thrilled to announce two new leaders for Credit Americas in New York.

Brian Chappatta will join us as Managing Editor overseeing the Leveraged Finance & Distressed Debt teams. Brian has been ME of Wealth since March 2023, running global coverage that spanned everything from the rise and fall of billionaires’ empires, to the US commercial real estate crunch and squeeze on America’s middle class, to how President Trump and his family are profiting from the White House. While many of you know Brian from his time leading Wealth, he cut his teeth at Bloomberg on Credit. He spent

almost five years on the muni team covering everything from Detroit’s bankruptcy to Puerto Rico’s fiscal woes. As a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, Brian wrote extensively about high-yield corporate bonds and leveraged loans as those markets imploded during the pandemic.

Brian will work closely with Managing Editor Natalie Harrison as she oversees the Corporate & Structured Finance, Primary Markets and Municipal Finance teams. Building on the success Natalie has already achieved as Credit Americas expanded into one of the newsroom’s busiest and largest groups, our bolstered management team will continue to elevate the group’s work at a pivotal time for the markets we cover while executing on our shared priorities with the Finance, Wealth & Legal teams. We also plan to post for a new Leveraged Finance team leader soon.

Sally Bakewell will become a Senior Editor within the Leveraged Finance & Distressed Debt group. Sally is coming off a five-year run as Team Leader of Finance Americas, delivering more than 80 Big Takes along the way. She led the team through the post-pandemic boom days, the regional banking crisis of 2023 and the turbulent, though profitable, start to the second Trump administration. Sally is also no stranger to Credit, having started on the team in London before moving to New York in 2016. During her first stint on Credit Americas, she covered the early days of private credit’s emergence and broke news on the epic Serta Simmons creditor brawl that helped pave the way for the cutthroat deals that have become commonplace in today’s market.

Both Brian and Sally are well-versed in what makes Credit so core to Bloomberg, and we’ll count on them to use their previous experience to help bring reporters together across Credit, Finance, Investing and Wealth to tell the biggest stories in our world.

Please join us in congratulating Brian and Sally and welcoming them to Credit. Both will start meeting with team members over the next couple of weeks before formally starting their new roles later this month.