NYT biz desk hires Popper from LATimes

New York Times business editor Larry Ingrassia sent out the following staff announcement on Monday afternoon:

I’m pleased to announce that Nathaniel Popper, the New York business correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, is joining Business Day to cover markets and finance.

In his two years at the L.A. Times, Nathaniel has spent much of his time writing about Wall Street, but also has ranged far and wide in covering business.

By digging through records in Washington, he chronicled how many times Wall Street lobbyists had met with the Federal Reserve and other regulatory agencies to water down the financial reform legislation. He wrote a piece showing that some brokerage firms are pushing foreign exchange trading to small investors, which invariably leads to losses in this highly volatile market. Another story showed how a little-known company set up by two former California public employees used their political connections to make money issuing tax-free municipal bonds.

Before joining the L.A. Times, Nathaniel was a senior writer for the Forward in New York, covering a variety of topics for six years. He wrote a story in the Forward about the mistreatment of the undocumented immigrants working at a Jewish-owned Iowa meat packing plant, which was followed in the national press and eventually resulted in the arrest of company executives for employing illegal immigrants.

Nathaniel, who grew up in Pittsburgh, is a 2002 graduate of Harvard, where he majored in history and literature of America. He lived in Berlin for a year after college, studying German literature. He plays ice hockey, and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Elissa.

He will start on March 26.  Join me in welcoming Nathaniel to The Times.