AP business editor leaving

Kevin Noblet, business editor for The Associated Press, is leaving the wire service at the end of next week. He had been in that position since 2004 and has worked for AP for more than 27 years. Noblet would not disclose his next job.

A replacement has not been named, but deputy business editor Chuck Hawkins, who has worked at Bloomberg News and BusinessWeek, is a likely candidate to be his successor. Hawkins has directed the day-to-day operations of AP business news since 2004.

Noblet has been a board member of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers since 2005, and was selected earlier this year to join the SABEW officers ladder, meaning he would become president in 2011.

Noblet was deputy business editor from 2000 to 2004, and previously was deputy international editor for six years, a period during which AP won two Pulitzers for overseas-related coverage. During his four years in charge of the business news department, its staffing grew from 27 to more than 100 and the specialty services AP Financial News and Money & Markets were launched.Â

A native of Stamford, Conn., Noblet worked for newspapers in Connecticut before joining the AP in 1980 in New Orleans. He reported for AP from Latin America and the Caribbean for nearly a decade, based in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Santiago, Chile, where he was chief of bureau, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Noblet graduated from Concordia College in Bronxville, N.Y. He was a 1990-91 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and was the Scripps Visiting Professional at Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism for 1999-2000