FT taps Barnes to cover US deals and activists

The Financial Times has named Oliver Barnes its U.S. deals and activist investor correspondent.

He has been covering U.S. biotechnology, pharmaceutical and health care companies.

Barnes has been the FT’s leisure industries correspondent based in London. He covers hospitality, gambling, tourism, tobacco and cannabis companies. He previously covered health and science for the FT. He was awarded a journalism prize by the Royal Statistical Society for his coverage of the pandemic.

Before joining the FT, he worked for BBC News, writing articles for Reality Check, the fact-checking arm of the BBC, and reporting for radio outlets including Radio 4 and the World Service.

He holds a bachelor’s degree from UCL and a master’s degree from City St. Georges, University of London.

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.