A FORMER chief reporter on Scotland on Sunday newspaper has been named the new business editor at the BBC.
Kamal Ahmed succeeds Robert Peston, who is taking over as the BBC’s economics editor. Ahmed has been business editor of the Sunday Telegraph for four years.
He began his journalism career at the Dumbarton-based Lennox Herald.
Said former Lennox Herald editor, Bill Heaney: “I hired Kamal when he had completed his university course. We got on very well together and we had a brilliant team at that time. The reporters included Kamal and Sergio Casci, Lynn Cochrane and Annette McCann.
“Kamal liked Dumbarton very much and we gave him a great send off when he left. He was an immaculate dresser. We bought him a parting gift of an extremely expensive silk tie. He must have been the first man in Dumbarton to wear a diamond ear-ring. I sent him to Cameron House to do a special feature on the luxury there and he was pictured in the Jacuzzi puffing on a large cigar.
“I think it was the first time we had occasion to use the word, ‘sybarite’, in Dumbarton.”
Says a biog of Ahmed on the Media Trust website, Kamal was director of communications at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, prior to his appointment as business editor at The Sunday Telegraph in September four years ago.
“Previous roles included head of news at The Observer where he was one of the key people behind the paper’s complete redesign and relaunch into the Berliner compact format, during his tenure The Observer was named Newspaper of the Year at the British Press Awards.
“Kamal was also media editor at The Guardian and the paper’s Royal Correspondent as well as being chief reporter for Scotland on Sunday. Kamal graduated from Leeds University with a BA in Politics and took a post-graduate diploma in Newspaper Journalism at City University.”
