Jill R Shah
Jill R Shah covers the intersection of trading firms, crypto markets and complex financing for the Financial Times, with a beat that follows how risk and money move through modern market structures. She works as a US trading and crypto correspondent, concentrating on stories where market plumbing, leverage and digital assets meet. Before joining the Financial Times she reported on credit markets at Bloomberg News, building a grounding in corporate borrowing and investor protections that now informs her coverage of trading and crypto.
Wall Street trading firms and market structure
Shah’s core reporting tracks the strategies and funding of large trading firms, often focusing on how they expand into new products and reshape market structure. One recent piece examines Tower Research Capital’s push into fast-growing fixed-income exchange traded funds, detailing how a traditionally high-speed trading firm is muscling into interest-rate products that have become central to bond-market liquidity. Another cluster of stories follows Jane Street, a highly profitable and secretive trading firm, as it moves a large debt stack from a broad syndicate of lenders to a smaller group of private creditors led by Pimco.
In that coverage she lays out how Jane Street took on billions of dollars in additional debt to fund investments in artificial intelligence while using private financing to reduce mandatory public disclosure of its financials.
Her reporting on Jane Street also highlights how trading risks flow through balance sheets and funding structures. Shah explains how the firm was wrongfooted by a large investment in Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness alongside wider market volatility, culminating in a multibillion-dollar loss disclosed as part of the refinancing process. In public notes accompanying the scoop she describes spending several intense days making sure the details were correct before publication, underscoring a methodical approach to high-stakes stories on Wall Street trading houses.
Crypto companies and stablecoins
Shah’s crypto coverage zeroes in on the business models and funding decisions of major digital-asset firms rather than on price moves alone. She has written about Tether’s global expansion, focusing on how the company has grown to hundreds of staff while emphasising internal corporate structure and profit-and-loss discipline as it scales. Another story follows Tether’s decision to retreat from a planned $20bn funding push after investor pushback, showing how appetite from capital providers can constrain even dominant stablecoin issuers. In these pieces she looks closely at how governance, transparency and financing choices at crypto companies affect both their resilience and the broader market.
Her role as US trading and crypto correspondent also extends into events, where she appears as a speaker at the Financial Times’ “Next Phase of Digital Assets” conference. That presence reflects a remit that spans digital assets, trading strategies and institutional adoption, and her articles typically connect crypto developments to mainstream financial infrastructure and regulation.
Private credit, distressed deals and insurers
Shah continues to draw on her credit-markets background in coverage of private lenders and distressed situations. In a joint story on Oaktree, the $223bn manager known for distressed debt investing, she reports on plans to acquire a South Carolina insurer following the collapse of 777 Partners, a Miami investment firm that had channelled assets into high-risk bets including prominent football clubs. The article traces how funds managed by Oaktree would take a controlling stake in the insurer from Advantage Capital as part of a restructuring, highlighting the chain of exposure from aggressive investment strategies back to insurance balance sheets and their policyholders.
That work sits alongside her reporting on trading firms’ debt refinancings, building a consistent focus on how leverage, lenders and complex deals redistribute risk across the financial system.
Credit markets and corporate finance legacy
Shah’s earlier career in credit markets continues to shape the kinds of stories she pursues.
Her own professional site describes her as a business and financial journalist with a focus on crypto and trading today, grounded in several years covering credit markets. At her previous outlet she co-wrote a detailed investigation into fashion-rental company CaaStle and allegations of large-scale fraud, bringing together corporate filings, investor communications and claims from insiders. That experience with long-form, document-based reporting on financial misconduct feeds into her current work on trading firms and crypto issuers, where she often follows funding structures and governance questions rather than treating markets as purely price-driven.
Across trading, crypto and credit pieces, Shah’s coverage is distinguished by close attention to who provides funding, how balance sheets are structured and what that means for transparency and risk transfer.
She gravitates toward stories where technical financing choices - private versus public debt, leveraged bets, ambitious funding plans - have real consequences for investors and counterparties. For communications teams in finance and digital assets, she is a journalist whose interest lies in the mechanics of deals, the robustness of governance and the way those factors shape market power and vulnerability.
4 more finance journalists.
Abigail Summerville
Abigail Summerville brings a leveraged finance background to her work covering consumer and retail mergers and acquisitions for Reuters. She reports on deal-making and capital markets across food, beverages, spirits, personal care, skincare, bath products and pet food. Her stories focus on transaction terms, ownership stakes, valuation, debt structures and funding sources. She often breaks news on potential sales and strategic reviews before formal announcements. Notable coverage includes Sazerac’s acquisition of Au Vodka, Blackstone’s exploration of a ZO Skin Health sale, CVC’s efforts to sell the parent of Dr Teal’s, and Colgate-Palmolive’s planned divestitures. She also covers consumer IPOs, including Jersey Mike’s and Black Rock Coffee, and co-writes Wall Street market reports. She joined Reuters in 2022 after three years covering leveraged finance and primary debt markets.
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Aimee Picchi
Aimee Picchi connects Social Security, retirement programs and economic policy directly to the financial security of ordinary Americans, showing how macro decisions hit household budgets. She is associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch at CBS News, covering business and personal finance with clear, accessible explanations of complex money issues. Her core beat is Social Security and retirement, interest rates and inflation, and how policy, markets and company strategies affect workers, retirees, savers and investors. She reports on benefit adequacy, looming Social Security cuts, COLA changes, Federal Reserve rate decisions, fuel costs, trade tensions and labor’s share of income, always framing coverage around pocketbook impacts. Her background includes retirement reporting fellowships, prior staff reporting on technology, media and business, an Institutional Investor book on affluent investors, and freelance work for national outlets. She also writes science fiction and fantasy and is a Nebula Award finalist.
Alex Harring
Alex Harring turns fast-moving market, economic and corporate developments into clear pre-market briefings that show what will matter when U.S. trading opens. He is a markets and economics reporter for CNBC’s digital platforms and writes Morning Squawk, a flagship daily newsletter that gives readers five key things to know before the stock market opens. His beat spans financial markets, investing, consumer trends and the U.S. economy, with coverage of central bank decisions, inflation, corporate strategy, sector moves and geopolitical shocks. He focuses on how policy, data and earnings shape equities, interest rates, currencies and investor positioning, linking price action with underlying drivers in real time and in reported features. Harring’s background reporting on corporate news, business and the economy across print, digital, broadcast and streaming informs his habit of connecting markets, companies and geopolitics in one frame.