By Dominic Ponsford
Ten-to-one ‘outsider’ Will Lewis is to succeed Neil Collins as City editor of the Daily Telegraph.
City bookmakers Cantor Index had Sunday Telegraph City editor Robert
Peston and Daily Telegraph deputy City editor Kate Rankin as favourites
to take the job.
But Telegraph editor Martin Newland said he
picked Lewis, currently business editor of The Sunday Times, for his
“enormous energy” and “remarkable CV”.
Lewis, 36, attended a
comprehensive school in Brent Cross, studied law and economics at
university and then took a postgraduate journalism course at City
University in London.
He spent three years on The Mail on Sunday
finance team before moving to the Financial Times for eight and a half
years where he finished up as global news editor. He has been at The
Sunday Times for three and half years and said the move back to daily
journalism was too good an opportunity to pass up.
Lewis was
approached by the Telegraph last week but has yet to agree a leaving
date. His successor at The Sunday Times has yet to be found.
He
said: “I love this place but I’ve been wanting to get back into daily
journalism. Every Friday I’m like a kid in a candy store because we are
live. I can’t wait for every day to be like that.
“I haven’t got
a negative thing to say about The Sunday Times. It’s a fantastic
newspaper and to work here is a brilliant experience. People just do
their jobs brilliantly and work fantastically long hours which is why
the product’s so good.
“I’m not leaving because of anything to do with The Sunday Times. It really was the chance to get stuck into daily journalism.”
Collins,
The Daily Telegraph’s City editor since 1986, said he had decided to
leave because “this is a tough job and my work-life balance consists
basically of 12 hours working and two hours winding down before I
stumble into bed. You can’t do it indefinitely.”
He applied for
redundancy when the Telegraph Group cut 90 journalists from the staff
this year, but management induced him to stay with a pay rise. He said
his decision to leave was brought about by Newland’s decision to move
the separate City office from the Square Mile to Canary Wharf.
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