Reuters names financial services editor, national affairs editor

Reuters America editor Dayan Candappa sent out the following announcement Friday morning:

Colleagues,

Carmel Crimmins is moving to New York as Financial Services Editor, Americas to drive our coverage of banking, M&A and financial regulation from Canada to Argentina. Meanwhile, Jason Szep is taking on a new role as EIC National Affairs. His mission is to provide distinctive coverage of the most important national stories in the United States for Reuters’ global audience.

CARMEL CRIMMINS

Carmel, who covered the Irish banking crisis, investigated governance in the global funds industry and was kicked out of Myanmar for her reporting of human right abuses, has spent the past two and a half years as Deputy Financial Services Editor for EMEA in Dublin. She will move to the United States in the summer to run our high-flying U.S. finance team which is once again in expansion mode.

Carmel, who has a Masters degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics, joined Reuters in 1999 as a graduate trainee. After stints in Berlin, Frankfurt and London, she moved to the Philippines, where as deputy bureau chief she covered attempted coups, insurgencies and natural disasters and was named a Reuters’ Journalist of the Year in 2007 for her role in reporting on the suppression of pro-democracy protests in Myanmar. The Myanmar government was less impressed with her work on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in 2008 and deported her.

Carmel moved to Dublin just before the Irish economy imploded and her reporting and leadership helped Reuters dominate breaking news on what was the first and worst banking crisis in the euro zone. Later, in the wake of the Apple tax controversy, she led colleagues in mapping the Irish subsidiaries of S&P 500 companies – the first time anyone had attempted to illustrate the extent of Ireland’s role in U.S. corporate tax avoidance.

Carmel won a place on an investigative journalism program in 2014 for stories ranging from corporate governance shortcomings in the global funds industry to Ireland’s system of adoptions. A story she wrote on the one-dimensional nature of British corporate diversity drives was nominated for a European Diversity Award that year.

JASON SZEP

Jason, a Boston native, will take up his new role in Washington in June, exactly 25 years after he joined Reuters and a year after he collected a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

He will lead a small team of reporters and focus on richly reported stories that lie between the areas covered by the U.S. general news team, the Washington bureau and the network of specialist financial bureaus and teams across the country.

Jason will work closely with those teams, Top News, and the Enterprise team to develop impactful stories and shape his new role. Jason will advertise for jobs in his new team soon.

This is a challenging assignment and I can think of no one better equipped for it. Jason began his career as a financial markets and economics correspondent in Toronto before postings in Sydney, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Boston, Bangkok, where he was Southeast Asia Bureau Chief, and most recently in Washington, where he was deputy bureau chief and International Affairs Editor. In this most recent assignment, Jason transformed the Washington bureau’s role in Reuters geopolitical and diplomatic coverage and helped us deliver a series of agenda-setting scoops and Special Reports.

Jason won a Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi award in 2007 for a series on Mormonism in America, and shared a Pulitzer Prize with Bangkok Correspondent Andrew R.C. Marshall in 2014 for their reporting of the crisis in Myanmar. Other honors include three Awards for Editorial Excellence by the Society of Publishers in Asia and an Osborn Elliott Prize. His assignments have ranged from Kabul and Islamabad to the U.S. presidential campaign trail during the 2008 election.

Both Jason and Carmel will report to me. Please join me congratulating them and welcoming Carmel to the Americas.