New International Editor on Business Desk

I'm pleased to announce a new role for Rich Barbieri in Business. In a few months, Rich will move to London to become international Business editor, overseeing our coverage in Europe and Asia.

In his new role, he will help reimagine and direct our coverage of companies, markets and economics in Europe. Our new Asia editor, who I expect to announce shortly, will report to him.

Rich has been our editor in Seoul since 2023. He has reinvigorated our business coverage there in part by hiring some fabulous new colleagues. He has overseen our stories on rare earths, the real estate crisis in China, the impact of tariffs on the car industry in Japan and much, much more. The pace of news in Asia has been relentless as increased tariffs and the second Trump administration in the United States changes the global economy. We are all lucky that Rich rarely sleeps and so gracefully steps in when we do.

Rich joined The Times as deputy Business editor in 2019 and pushed us to make our work more urgent and more analytical. In short order we had all upped our game. We were faster and better at thinking about the next story.

Prior to The Times, Rich oversaw the global business report at CNN Digital and worked at Crains, The Associated Press and American Lawyer Media.

"Rich is the paragon of an editor who 'knows things.' He heard the news before you and, for good measure, has already hatched several fully formed ideas for the stories that readers will want in the days, weeks and months ahead," says Jason Karaian, our deputy business editor in London, who will continue to work closely with Rich. "On any subject, in any part of the world. It's a superpower that has won him universal esteem on the Business desk.

He also tends to one of the most elaborate Google Doc empires I've seen and is doing his part to prop up the media industry by reading and subscribing to every newsletter out there. Seriously - all of them."

Please join me in congratulating Rich and wishing him well as he changes time zones, continents and cuisines.

- Ellen Pollock