FT hires Lakshmi as Jakarta correspondent

Anantha Lakshmi

The Financial Times has hired Anantha Lakshmi as its Jakarta correspondent.

She previously was Reuters bureau chief of Malaysia and Brunei after moving to Kuala Lumpur as deputy bureau chief in 2016.

Lakshmi distinguished herself in reporting on everything from the assassination of Kim Jong Nam to investigations of migrant deaths in detention and the palm oil industry to the surprise fall of Najib Razak’s government and the return of Mahathir Muhammad in 2018 elections – and then Mahathir’s own fall.

She joined Reuters in Bangalore, where she covered U.S. companies in the industrial, aerospace and auto sectors and previously anchored coverage of gold and other precious metals in Asia.

Lakshmi holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Madras.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.