WSJ names deputy banking editor, makes other changes to finance team

Wall Street Journal financial editor Charles Forelle sent out the following announcement on Tuesday:

Hi all,

I’m thrilled to announce new faces and new jobs on the Finance team.

Christina Rexrode is named deputy banking editor. As deputy, Christina will help steer the team’s coverage, edit its stories and continue to write on banking. Christina is a veteran banking and finance reporter who joined MarketWatch in 2013 and moved to the Journal a year later. She’s covered Citigroup, Bank of America, U.S. regional banks, mortgages and more, and has distinguished herself as a talented writer across a wide expanse of finance. She previously covered banks for the Charlotte Observer (hometown of Bank of America and, once upon a time, Wachovia) and finance for the AP in New York. She began her career as a business reporter at the St. Petersburg Times. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina.

Ben Eisen takes on the new beat of financial innovation and engineering. In this job, he’ll write about the cutting edge of finance–the experimenters, the boundary-pushers and the schemers. (He’s touched this territory before.) Ben came to the Journal in 2016 as a markets reporter and fast became a stalwart of our MoneyBeat team thanks to his nimble writing and his fluency in pretty much everything finance (bonds, buybacks, blockchain, securitization of “Elmo’s Song” royalties). He has steered the WSJ Markets newsletter and our live markets coverage. Ben worked at Bloomberg before joining the Journal, and before that at MarketWatch. He majored in American Studies at Cornell University.

Ben and Christina report to Banking Editor Marie Beaudette.

Avantika Chilkoti joins us on the markets team in London. Avantika just completed a masters degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School. She managed to tuck in a prolific internship between academic terms at the New York Times Washington bureau. Before that she wrote on the economy and business at the Financial Times as the Indonesia bureau chief and as a correspondent in Mumbai, writing on mining in Indonesia, politics in the Philippines and Facebook in India. Avantika earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Cambridge in land economy. She reports to Europe Markets Editor Alistair MacDonald.

Jon Sindreu moves to the London Heard on the Street team, to write about airlines, the global transportation industry, financial markets and the economy. Jon joined the Journal as an intern in 2014 covering the U.K. economy and moved to the London markets team just in time for Brexit. He is an original thinker with a prodigious grasp of modern economics (ask him what’s wrong with the current-account deficit) and has done standout work challenging market orthodoxies. He studied computer science and journalism at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and financial journalism at London’s City University. He reports to Heard on the Street’s Europe editor, Stephen Wilmot.

Jess Menton moves to the markets team in New York. Jess will write broadly on markets across asset classes and will play a key role in our digital markets coverage. (She got off to a super-fast start, so you’ve already seen her name on the WSJ Markets newsletter.) Jess joined the Journal in 2015 as an editor working on the What’s News app. More recently she has been a senior platform editor and has curated the 10-Point newsletter. In addition to her jackknife of digital skills, Jess knows markets: She previously worked as a markets and finance reporter for International Business Times and other outlets. She is a graduate of Texas A&M University with a degree in communications. Jess reports to Deputy Markets Editor Lauren Pollock.

Don’t forget: We have some really cool jobs open right now. If you’d like to be a part of this superb team, click through or let me know.

-Charles