Allister Heath, the new editor of free financial newspaper City AM, has said that the current uncertainty in financial markets will make financial journalism ‘more exciting”.
Heath, 30, who had been editor of weekly magazine The Business since January 2007 and is associate editor of The Spectator, said he has fulfilled a longstanding ambition by editing a newspaper and wanted to put City AM at the ‘centre of Britain’s financial media”.
He declined to say what his plans would be for the paper, but told Press Gazette: ‘I have high hopes for it. It’s a very good newspaper and very influential – I want to take it to an even higher level and make it an essential read for people in the City. I want to make it the most exciting business publication in the UK.”
When asked about the volatility in financial markets and a credit crunch in global finance that could potentially cause a downturn in the UK economy, Heath said: ‘It actually makes it more exciting. In times of uncertainty people are very interested in finding out what’s going on and they turn more to a financial medium. Things like the credit crunch and extreme volatility in the stock markets are great for things like City AM because we really want people to read it every morning.”
Heath called working on The Business, the title he joined as a reporter in 2002, as the best of his career and said its future is secure.
‘The Business has been around for a long time and will continue to be around for a long time. I wish it the best of luck.”
Before joining The Business, Heath was head of the European Journal and was in charge of research at the Europe Foundation.
City AM, now in its third year, is distributed in London’s financial districts and according to December’s ABC figures had a daily average distribution of nearly 96,000.
Heath takes over from David Hellier, who has been acting editor since David Parsley left the paper last summer for personal reasons.
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