Reuters names new financial editor, new wealth editor, other changes

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

Reuters Americas editor Jim Gaines made the following announcement Thursday about changes to the wire service’s financial news team:

I’m very pleased to announce several appointments meant to bring greater focus and creativity to our financial coverage.

Beginning on January 3, our new Financial Editor for the Americas will be Alwyn Scott, managing editor of the Puget Sound Business Journal for the past four years. In that time it has won 18 national awards and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Loeb Award for its coverage of the foreclosure crisis and collapse of Washington Mutual. He was previously Business Projects editor of The Seattle Times, News Editor at the Wall Street Journal Europe and in numerous positions with Dow Jones Newswires.

Reporting to him will be Dan Wilchins, who is in charge of our coverage of banking, and Paritosh Bansal, who leads our mergers and acquisitions team.

Also reporting to Al will be Lauren Young, who is taking on the new position of Wealth Editor. Lauren joined Reuters in 2010 to develop personal finance and investing coverage for Reuters.com and other Thomson Reuters platforms. In her new role, she will continue to run that coverage and also oversee the wealth management team headed up by Jennifer Merritt, along with our asset management reporters in Boston.

Bill Schomberg has agreed to take on expanded responsibility as well, as editor for both our economics and markets coverage. This joint post has been created in EMEA and Asia as well as the Americas to encourage coordination and collaboration between these two critical and interrelated stories.

Reporting to Bill will be David Gaffen, who becomes our new markets editor, and an editor for economics to be named later.

Please join me in congratulating Al, Bill, David and Lauren on their important new roles.