Lionel Barber

Lionel Barber
Barber speaking at the Financial Times 125th anniversary party in London, June 2013
Born	1955
Occupation	Editor
Notable credit(s)	Editor of the Financial Times
Children	1 daughter, 1 son

Lionel Barber (born 1955) is an English journalist. Barber was appointed editor of the Financial Times (FT) in November 2005. Earlier in his career, he worked at The Scotsman and The Sunday Times, but was employed in a number of senior posts at the FT from the mid-1980s.

Barber was educated at Dulwich College, an independent school for boys in Dulwich in South London and at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, graduating in 1978 with a joint honours degree in German and Modern History.

Barber began his career in journalism in 1978 as a reporter for The Scotsman. In 1981, after being named Young Journalist of the Year in the British press awards, he moved to The Sunday Times, where he was a business correspondent. The co-writer of several books, his works includes a history of Reuters news agency (The Price of Truth, 1985) and the Westland affair (Not with Honour, 1986).

In 1985, he was the Laurence Stern fellow at The Washington Post. In 1992, he was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, working under Nelson Polsby at the Institute of Governmental Studies. In 1996, he was a visiting fellow at the Robert Schuman centre at the European University Institute in Florence. Barber's positions at the Financial Times have included Washington correspondent and US editor (1986–1992), Brussels bureau chief (1992–1998), and news editor (1998–2000). He was formerly the editor of the Financial Times Continental European edition (2000–2002), during which he briefed US President George W. Bush ahead of his first trip to Europe.