Theo Francis returns to the WSJ

Wall Street Journal business editor Dennis Berman made the following staff announcement on Wednesday:

Please join me in welcoming Theo Francis back to the Wall Street Journal.

An ace financial and investigative reporter, Theo specializes in using regulatory documents to write about complex financial, economic and legal issues, explaining the things that companies would prefer remain hidden from view.

Theo will be diving into these topics as part of Andrew Dowell’s New York-based corporate group. He will also be a resource for reporters across the Journal, helping to train them in using SEC and other regulatory and local filings.

At The Wall Street Journal from 2000 to 2008, Theo wrote about hospitals, insurance, retirement and pensions, executive pay, hurricanes and the Wausau (Fla.) Possum Festival.

He arrived in BusinessWeek’s DC bureau in mid-2008, just in time to cover TARP, HAMP and other financial-crisis acronyms.

Since then, he has contributed to The New York Times, Quartz, footnoted, National Public Radio and other news outlets.

In September 2012, he founded Disclosure Matters, an independent research, training and consulting firm in Washington, and he also teaches journalism at the University of Maryland.

He was part of the Journal team that won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of corporate scandals, and his work, individually and with others, has also been recognized with George Polk, Gerald Loeb and other national awards.

He is a graduate of the University of Illinois and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and lives in Washington

Please join me in welcoming back an excellent journalist to our ranks.