David McHugh appointed AP’s European Business News Editor

NEW YORK -- David McHugh, chief of bureau for the AP in Germany and Poland, will become the news organization’s business editor for Europe.

The appointment was announced Nov. 9 by John Daniszewski, AP’s International Editor.

McHugh will be based in London, leading a team of business writers across the continent covering markets, companies, monetary policy, technology advancements, commodities and other financial and commercial issues.

The appointment becomes effective Jan. 1.

“McHugh will play a key role on our expanding business team at a time when news consumers are more than ever affected by and interested in economic issues,” said Dan Perry, AP’s Europe-Africa Editor.

McHugh succeeds Amy Finkelstein, who will become an editor for the Business News department in New York after three years in London.

McHugh joined the AP in Moscow in 2000 and transferred a year later to Frankfurt, where he led AP’s coverage of German business. He previously spent three years in Russia working for the English-language Moscow Times, where he served as news editor. He also worked at the Detroit Free Press from 1985 to 1997. Before that McHugh reported for the Macomb Daily in Mt. Clemens, Michigan.

“This is a great opportunity to work with a top-flight team of business writers and further develop our excellent European business report. More and more, the really big news out of Europe is the economic story,” McHugh said.

As AP bureau chief in Berlin, McHugh led coverage of the election of Angela Merkel, Germany’s first woman chancellor, the rise of Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski as the ruling political duo in Poland, and the reaction in Germany to the election of Benedict XVI, the first German-born pope in centuries.

McHugh, who grew up in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, speaks Russian, German and Italian. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and has a master’s degree in medieval literature from the University of North Carolina.