WSJ/Dow Jones reporter moving to Zurich

Andrew Morse, the bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal‘s operation in Zurich, sent out the following staff announcement on Thursday:

I’m delighted to announce that John Letzing will join the Zurich bureau of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires later this month to cover Switzerland’s influential banking industry. John takes on this role as the country’s financial companies, most notably UBS and Credit Suisse, refocus their businesses after both the economic crisis and pressure from authorities in other countries.

John’s is a familiar byline within the company. He joins from the San Francisco bureau, where he regularly broke news on big U.S. Internet companies. He also carved out a niche writing a-heds – a personal favorite involves the intersection of American football and competitive paper-plane flying – as well as local stories for the Bay Area pages. Previously, John worked with our colleagues at MarketWatch and Dow Jones VentureWire in Silicon Valley.

As befitting the multilingual society he’ll be entering, John speaks Italian and Czech. I suspect it won’t be long before he adds German and French to his linguistic portfolio.

Please join me in welcoming John to the bureau.