‘Irascible’ journalist who launched FT’s first overseas edition dies aged 79

The journalist who set up the first Financial Times overseas edition has died at the age of 79.

Former Dublin and Rome correspondent for the FT Dominick Coyle was posted to Frankfurt in 1979 tasked with setting up the paper's Europe edition.

Former Pearson director Sir David Bell told the FT: “He had to liaise with printers who set the paper each night in English even though none of them spoke the language…He was also very much a European who saw all the EU’s advantages even though he was always a realist about its challenges.”

The FT notes in its report:

Desk editors were known to despair at the length and near-Joycean convolutedness of some articles he filed – while managers had not before encountered a journalist wont to bring a lawyer or accountant along to negotiations on his next job or pay rise. After being brought back to London to take editorial charge of the international operation as a whole, he held roles that also included head of markets. Irascible and jokily genial by turn, he was an Italophile bon viveur and opera buff.