Rea, longtime biz journalist, dies at 72

Alison Rea

Alison Rea, a business journalist who worked for BusinessWeek, Fortune and Reuters, has died at the age of 72.

An obituary states, “In 1980, Alison made the life-changing decision to get an MBA in finance and international business at New York University which paved the way to her career covering business and banking over the next three decades. In 1982 she started at Fortune Magazine as a fact checker and in 1985 was promoted to the international finance team.

“Early on in her career, Alison showed a knack for getting along with leading CEOS. In 1984 when John Reed became head of Citicorp, Alison won him over at his very first press conference. Instead of the usual sort of question about strategy, she asked him what number Grecian Formula he used on his hair. He laughed and from then on, called on Alison every time. She formed a lasting friendship with the Reeds and other banking leaders without ever compromising her journalistic independence

“In 1987 Alison moved to the New York office of Reuters where she became the US banking correspondent for eight years, a job that she loved and that brought her many life-long friends. In 1996, Business Week recruited Alison to be the Money and Banking editor but in 1997 she joined the New York office of the Economist Intelligence Unit where she wrote Global Investment Banking Strategy: Insights from Industry Leaders (published 1998) and served as the US editor of the EIU Strategic Finance Quarterly Review. Thereafter she wrote international finance and trade reports for the EIU as well as several of the ‘Big Four’ Accounting firms and consultancies such as McKinsey and CFO Services.”