Bloomberg overhauls coverage of big financial companies

Bloomberg News U.S. finance editor Michael Moore sent out the following message on Wednesday:

Hi team,

Over the past year, our coverage of the biggest financial firms has continued to lap the competition. Just in the last several weeks, we’ve been out in front on JPMorgan’s C-suite shakeup, AIG’s acquisition drive, and how banks are responding to cryptocurrencies.

To build on this strength, and to unlock fresh ways of breaking news and seeking out ideas, we’re tweaking the structure of our bank beats. We’re also fortunate to have some reinforcements as our U.S. market structure colleagues join the team. We hope that all these moves will encourage collaboration both within the group and across the newsroom and allow us to catch trends that don’t just affect one institution. The change also gives some of the team’s additions over the past couple years a chance to extend the drive they’ve shown to even more areas.

We’re going to redistribute the six biggest U.S. banks to six reporters instead of three, and each of those writers will also have a separate area of interest to cover across Wall Street. We’ll also be assigning oversight of the U.S. operations of several international banks to offer support to our colleagues abroad, particularly after hours in other time zones. Our intent simply is to encourage reporters to team up more on common topics of interest.

Here’s how we’ll divide things up among our finance reporters in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles:

Sonali Basak will add coverage of Morgan Stanley. She’ll also own the boutique investment banks, UBS, and the dealmaking among financial firms and their PE counterparts.

Katherine Chiglinsky will take on the beat of Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway in addition to the life insurers. She’ll work closely with the Investing team and continue to chronicle corporate pension plans and assist in coverage of wealth management.

Shahien Nasiripour will cover Wells Fargo in addition to his reporting on consumer lending in its many forms. He’ll also detail the U.S. retail push of HSBC and Santander.

Jennifer Surane will add Citigroup to her portfolio of payments companies and U.S. regional lenders. She’ll also track Barclays and its U.S. card business.

Dakin Campbell will cover Goldman Sachs as well as the activities of macro and equity trading desks across Wall Street. He’ll also monitor Deutsche Bank’s U.S. operations.

Laura Keller will cover Bank of America as well as the ways investment banks extend and trade credit. She will continue to follow Jefferies.

Hugh Son will own JPMorgan and lead coverage of how technology and automation is reshaping Wall Street. He’ll also hold watch on the U.S. side of Credit Suisse.