Roula Khalaf to succeed Lionel Barber as Financial Times editor

Lionel Barber will be replaced by a first-ever female editor, Roula Khalaf, as Financial Times editor.

Khalaf has served as deputy editor with FT emphasizing her role in leading its foreign reporting and her work on increasing newsroom diversity and attracting more female readers. She has also worked at Forbes, where she wrote an early critical profile of the trader Jordan Belfort.

Her promotion comes after a recruitment process that lasted most of the year and involved the FT’s Japanese owners, Nikkei, in assessing the many leading internal candidates.

Khalaf said, “I look forward to building on Lionel Barber’s extraordinary achievements and am grateful for his mentorship through the years.”

Under Barber, FT has moved from being a print-focused news provider to include a digital business with more than a million paying subscribers, and expanded its remit.

The Nikkei chairman Tsuneo Kita said: “I have full confidence that [Khalaf] will continue the FT’s mission to deliver quality journalism without fear and without favor, inspire and lead a team of the most talented journalists and pursue the FT’s new agenda covering business, finance, economics and world affairs.”