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Lionel Barber to step down as Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf to replace Lionel Barber as Financial Times editor
(32 minutes later)
Deputy editor Roula Khalaf to take over role early next year Deputy editor to become FT’s first female editor after almost year-long recruitment process
The editor of the Financial Times, Lionel Barber, is to step down early next year, he has announced. The Financial Times has appointed its first female editor, announcing that Roula Khalaf will replace Lionel Barber at the top of the business newspaper.
Roula Khalaf, the deputy editor, will take over, Reuters reported. Khalaf has served as deputy editor since 2016, with the newspaper emphasising her role in leading its foreign reporting and her work on increasing newsroom diversity and attracting more female readers.
As editor of the newspaper since 2005, Barber oversaw its sale by Pearson Media Group to the Japanese media corporation Nikkei in 2015. Her elevation to the top job comes after a recruitment process which lasted most of the year and involved the FT’s Japanese owners, Nikkei, in assessing the many leading internal candidates. Khalaf ultimately edged out rival candidates including John Thornhill, Alec Russell and Robert Shrimsley.
The FT has taken a liberal stance throughout the Brexit debate, and in 2016 Barber was offered France’s highest honour in recognition of his career in journalism and the paper’s “positive role in the European debate”. Khalaf said on Tuesday it was a “great honour” and “I look forward to building on Lionel Barber’s extraordinary achievements and am grateful for his mentorship through the years”.
More details soon … Speculation over Barber’s future reached a new high last week, when he flew to Japan to meet executives at Nikkei, although other staff pointed out that he had timed the visit to coincide with England’s appearances in the Rugby World Cup. He announced on Twitter on Tuesday morning that he would step down in the new year.
Under Barber’s leadership the 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; recent investigations into the President’s Club, the advertising executive Martin Sorrell, and allegations against the UKFast boss, Lawrence Jones, have shown a willingness to move away from its traditional focus on business news.
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 favour, inspire and lead a team of the most talented journalists and pursue the FT’s new agenda covering business, finance, economics and world affairs.”
Before joining the FT in 1995, Khalaf, who was born in Lebanon, worked at Forbes, where she wrote an early critical profile of the trader Jordan Belfort – later earning her character a brief appearance in the film The Wolf of Wall Street.