WSJ names two to its Asian Heard on the Street team

Duncan Mavin, the Asia editor for the Heard on the Street section of the Wall Street Journal, sent out the following staff announcement:

I am delighted to announce two additions to the Heard on the Street team in Asia. Abheek Bhattacharya joins from The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. Aaron Back is moving to the Heard team from his current post as deputy China bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires in Beijing. Both Abheek and Aaron will be based in Hong Kong.

Abheek was previously a writer for The Journal’s editorial page in Hong Kong, playing a significant role in the section’s insightful coverage of Asian economics and politics. His smart and sometimes provocative work has covered a broad swath of topics including Indian telecoms, Indonesian banking and Chinese macroeconomics. Before joining The Journal, Abheek was based in Mumbai with Mint, where he excelled with editorials on economics and finance. A native of Mumbai, he holds a Bachelor’s degree from Yale University, where he studied intellectual history.

Aaron Back joined Dow Jones Newswires in Singapore, writing on the city state’s banks, property developers and financial markets.  He transferred to the Beijing bureau, where he initially turned his keen eye for a great story to China’s burgeoning technology sector, before moving on to lead coverage of the country’s macro-economy and monetary policy. As deputy China bureau chief since 2011, his contribution has been invaluable to The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Newswires in China.  A native of Denver, Colorado, Aaron studied Economics and East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He has also studied mandarin Chinese at universities in Taipei and Nanjing.

Please join me in wishing Abheek and Aaron success in their new roles.