Reuters makes changes to industries and companies beats

Tiffany Wu, Americas managing editor at Reuters, sent out the following announcement on Thursday:

Colleagues – We have made a series of appointments in recent weeks to bolster our coverage of companies and industries in North America, as we look to better serve buy-side clients by producing stories that offer investable news, information and insights.

In case you missed some of those announcements, here is a summary of the talented reporters and editors who have moved into companies-related roles since late last year.

We have a job ad out now for a manufacturing reporter, and will be publicizing other jobs as they come up. Stay tuned!

Anjali Athavaley – Telecoms (New York)

Anjali joined Reuters in 2014 and covered the biggest U.S. packaged food and beverage makers, including Hershey, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. Most recently, she spent six months with the social media team in New York and later joined Reuters.com as a homepage editor. She completed the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in 2014 and previously spent seven years at the Wall Street Journal as a metro reporter, healthcare reporter and feature writer.

Anjali reports to Anna Driver and covers companies including Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and Sprint.

Alana Wise – Airlines and travel (New York)

Alana, a graduate of Howard University, joined Reuters in 2015 as an intern on the campaign team and became a correspondent in April 2016. During a tumultuous primary and general election contest, Alana reported on the pre-election anxiety of Democrats, the attacks and counter-attacks of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and the role of email servers and the FBI in electoral politics.  Alana also reported from Charleston and San Bernardino in the aftermath of deadly mass shootings in those cities. On her new beat, Alana’s main focus will be the airline industry, but hotels, cruise lines and internet travel brokers will get their due.

Alana reports to Joe White and covers companies including American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Continental.

Luciana Lopez – Infrastructure and transportation (New York)

Luciana has been with Reuters since 2009, undertaking a variety of assignments, including covering financial markets in Brazil and the 2016 presidential election campaign. She is now following the money as the Trump administration pursues plans to inject billions into repairing America’s infrastructure. She will investigate what happens at the intersection of corporate profits and public needs, especially when those needs involve roads and bridges. Her beat will also take her into the worlds of shipping and the digitally connected economy.

Luciana reports to Joe White and covers construction companies such as Fluor, the infrastructure units of conglomerates such as General Electric and United Technologies, and FedEx and UPS.

Michelle Conlin – Consumer debt (New York)

Michelle Conlin has taken on a new beat focusing on consumer debt of all stripes – mortgage, credit card, auto, student loans, etc. Michelle, who joined Reuters in 2012, recently finished a two-year stint on the team covering the 2016 election. Prior to Reuters, she was a senior writer at BusinessWeek magazine, where she wrote about the culture of work, corporate strategy, the working poor, philanthropy, economic policy, social issues and the labor market. Her reporting at Reuters has won awards from SABEW, the Newswomen’s Club, the New York Press Club and the National Real Estate Editors.

Michelle reports to Megan Davies.

David French – M&A focusing on energy and financial services (New York)

David joined the deals team in January, focusing on energy and financial services M&A. He joined us from Dubai, where he most recently led the coverage of financial and company news in the Gulf for Reuters. Prior to this, David was a reporter for IFR, a Thomson Reuters capital markets publication, in London. A former club captain of Queen Mary University Football Club, David enjoys playing and watching soccer in his spare time.

David reports to Greg Roumeliotis.

Suzanne Barlyn – Insurance (New York)

Suzanne joined Reuters in 2011 to cover the brokerage regulator Finra, and in 2015 began covering New York’s Department of Financial Services and financial enforcement cases. She has broken news about UBS advisers pushing risky Puerto Rico bonds on investors, regulators trying to get their arms around emerging technologies like Bitcoin, and authored a special report on how Delaware became a proud hub for shell companies that help bad guys avoid taxes, launder money from drug-trafficking or even conceal terrorist financing.

Suzanne, a trained lawyer, will now use those tenacious reporting skills to cover the insurance industry. It’s a huge beat that includes not just actuarial modeling, but investing massive balance sheets, responding to disruptive technologies, combating regulators’ attempts to deem them “too big to fail,” and occasionally charming Warren Buffett with a little green gecko. She reports to Lauren LaCapra.

Yasmeen Abutaleb – Healthcare (Washington)

Yasmeen will take on a new role as healthcare reporter, based in Washington, DC, to help cover the dismantling of Obamacare. Yasmeen is moving from the San Francisco bureau, where she covered social media. Most recently, she was part of the reporting team that produced a series of Special Reports on the threat of superbugs in the United States, prompting new proposed legislation in California. Yasmeen has already worked closely with the health team, starting in 2013 as an intern under the Kaiser Fellowship program, and in 2014 as a Reuters graduate trainee.

A journalism and microbiology graduate of the University of Maryland, Yasmeen is looking forward to returning to the East Coast next week and becoming a more self-respecting Terps fan.

David Ingram – Social media (San Francisco)

Dave joined Reuters in 2011 as a correspondent in Washington, covering lobbying and legal affairs. He was our Justice Department correspondent for two years, where his wins included breaking the news of the BP oil spill settlement. He moved to New York in 2014 to cover breaking legal news and later white-collar crime, where he was a major force in our top notch coverage of the FIFA scandal. Since August he has been on secondment with the General News team.

Dave will move to San Francisco to cover social media and especially the behemoth of that business, Facebook, a company that, with 1.8 billion users around the world, is something of a nation-state in itself. He will start on March 1 and report to Jonathan Weber.

Jeffrey Dastin – Amazon.com and e-commerce (San Francisco)

Jeffrey joined Reuters in 2014 after graduating from Yale University in history. As the U.S. airlines correspondent, he analyzed non-public data to reveal which carriers were best to fly during winter storms, broke news on industry in-fighting over government subsidies, and reported aboard the first commercial U.S.-Cuba flight in more than half a century. He joined the tech team in December to cover Amazon.com Inc, segueing with a data dive into the online retailer’s new air cargo operation.

Jeffrey is an architecture nut, an amateur composer and a fan of all things Italian — including cooking Italian food, something his new colleagues say they hope to benefit from. Jeffrey reports to Jonathan Weber.

Stephen Nellis – Apple (San Francisco)

Steve joined Reuters last November to cover Apple, taking over from Julia Love who moved to the Google beat. He came to Reuters from The Information, where he did excellent work covering enterprise technology companies. Prior to that, he was first a reporter and later an editor at the Pacific Coast Business Times. He is a journalism graduate of the University of Missouri’s school of journalism.

In the days between his leaving The Information and joining Reuters, Steve rode his bicycle from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, a distance of about 400 miles and a clear signal that he has the kind of stamina it takes to cover Apple. Steve reports to Jonathan Weber.

Richa Naidu – Retail (Chicago)

Richa joined Reuters in Bangalore in early 2013, just months after graduating from the University of St. Andrews in the UK. The next year, she revealed that insurers saw more than a 10-fold increase in payments arising from the downing of a Malaysian airliner and other attacks on airlines. She reported that India’s “King of Good Times” Vijay Mallya had left India for a Formula One race in Australia just days before an investigative panel planned to question him about $1.4 billion owed after his Kingfisher Airlines collapsed. Last year, Richa was seconded to the EMEA corporate finance team in London ahead of the Brexit vote. As part of the Asia Young Focus Group, Richa was on a team whose work earned them a trip to Singapore for multimedia training.

As our new retail reporter in Chicago, Richa will bring her expertise in finance and eye for the numbers behind stories to our coverage of Target and other retail companies. She will begin her new role in mid-February and move to Chicago in early March. Richa will report to David Greising.

Gary McWilliams – Houston bureau chief

Gary will lead the Houston reporting team focused on the industry at the heart of the world’s largest economy: energy. He takes the helm as the sector emerges from a two-year global price war into a new era under President Donald Trump. Houston will drive coverage of many of the world’s top energy firms, oil markets, the resurgence of the shale industry and the development of the renewable sector during this critical period for the country’s energy future.

Gary is a Houston veteran, with over two decades in the city. He joins us after 18 years at The Wall Street Journal as a senior special writer and news editor. Before that, he was BusinessWeek magazine’s Houston bureau chief.

Gary reports to Simon Webb.

Rich Valdmanis – Energy and environmental policy editor (Boston)

After the U.S. presidential campaign ended last November, Rich shifted over to the energy team to lead our coverage of the fight already shaping up over shale oil, climate change and deregulation under the Trump administration. This is a crucial area of coverage that sits at the intersection of government policy and corporate and environmental interests.

Rich joined Reuters in 1999 as a news assistant on the energy desk in New York, progressing to become Editor in Charge of Americas Energy in 2005. In 2009, he became Deputy Bureau Chief for West and Central Africa, where he covered the war in Mali, the revolution in Tunisia, and was part of the team of reporters that earned a Pulitzer nomination for coverage of Gadaffi’s overthrow in Libya. Rich became Boston Bureau Chief in 2013.

Rich reports to Simon Webb.

Denny Thomas – Canada companies editor (Toronto)

Besides digging out his own scoops, Denny will lead the Canadian companies team as we focus on delivering stories that are incisive and investable. Major themes include Canadian resource companies navigating an unsteady recovery in commodity prices, the impact of a deflating property market bubble on Canadian banks and insurers, as well as new turbulence ahead for plane maker Bombardier.

Denny joined Reuters in Mumbai in 2000 before moving to Sydney to cover Australian markets and M&A. He relocated to Hong Kong in 2010 and held a series of regional financial services roles, most recently Deputy Asia Finance Editor. Denny was nominated for Reuters Scoop of the year for Glencore coverage in 2011, and Reuters Reporter of the Year for dominating Asia M&A in 2013.

Denny reports to Amran Abocar.

Jim Finkle – Cyber Security/Technology Editor (Toronto)

Jim began covering computer hacking shortly after he joined our Boston bureau in 2005 and turned it into a full-time beat several years before competitors began to take the subject seriously. Jim has written stories on a wide variety of hacks, from iPhones and cash registers to implanted pacemakers, automobiles and the electricity grid. He has collaborated with colleagues across the file, leading to scoops on stories including last year’s Bangladesh Bank heist and subsequent attacks over SWIFT, the Target breach and destructive attacks on Saudi Aramco and Sony’s Hollywood studio.

Jim will move to Toronto in the spring and help drive regional cyber and technology stories. He reports to Jonathan Weber.