FT appoints Madison Marriage

The creation of the new unit - which will report to investigations editor Paul Murphy – signals the FT’s intent to sharpen its focus on abuse of power across industries and sectors, including healthcare and education, says the publisher.

According to the FT, Marriage will continue to examine executive misbehaviour in business and hold the rich and powerful to account, as well as conducting responsive investigations to major breaking news stories. Her team will draw on the growing in-house expertise at the FT in visual storytelling, podcasts, data journalism and graphics to deliver investigative packages.

Marriage joined the FT ten years ago as a reporter, the publisher added, becoming asset management correspondent in 2015, tax and accounting correspondent in 2017 and investigations correspondent in 2019.

She has delivered several award-winning investigations, including her 2018 exposé of the all-male fundraising dinner organised by the Presidents Club at London’s Dorchester Hotel. The undercover investigation detailed sexual harassment of women at an event attended by high-profile business and political figures, ultimately leading to the organisation’s closure, continued the FT.

She has also won plaudits for her coverage of Sir Martin Sorrell’s acrimonious departure from advertising conglomerate WPP, and exposed sexual misconduct by one of Britain’s leading technology entrepreneurs. More recently Marriage has focused on fraud and abuse in the housing sector and the mistreatment of whistleblowers at the Big Four accounting firms.

FT editor Roula Khalaf said: “I'm delighted with this promotion. Madison is an outstanding journalist who already has several important, public-interest FT investigations to her name. She will utilise the best of our talents in the newsroom to produce stories with high impact and make them more engaging for our readers. I look forward to what will come next from her team.”

Madison Marriage said: “This is a really exciting opportunity to push our coverage in a new direction and redefine what constitutes an ‘FT story’. No topic and no scandal will be off limits for our new investigative unit. We will tenaciously pursue stories wherever there has been an abuse of power and hold those responsible to account.”

Speaking of her awards, the FT says that Marriage has received multiple media industry awards for her reporting since 2015, including from the British Press Awards, the London Press Club and the CFA Society. She was shortlisted for Private Eye's Paul Foot award in 2018 and the Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain's Social Evils in 2019.