Matthew Campbell, left, and Kit Chellel.
Best magazine international business news reporting in print or digital
AWARD DATE: 2016
AWARD NAME: 12 The Morton Frank Award
AWARD RECIPIENT: Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel
AWARD RECIPIENT AFFILIATION: Bloomberg Businessweek
AWARD HONORED WORK: “Hot Mess: How Goldman Sachs Lost $1.2 Billion of Libya’s Money”
AWARD SPONSOR: Mark Lemcke
Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel’s engaging piece about a multi-billion-dollar deal between Goldman Sachs and Qaddafi’s Libya was a feat of storytelling. The careful and vivid selection of details — a banned novel resting on the table, a late-night call to a prostitute in Dubai, the long wait for an elevator in Tripoli — brought a cinematic quality to the writing. The reporting was equally impressive. The story, drawn from court documents and interviews, created three-dimensional characters and offered readers a rare glimpse into how secretive financial deals are sealed. It was a thrilling collision between two of the biggest news themes of the past decade — the financial crisis of 2008 and an autocracy on its last legs before the Arab Spring.
Read “Hot Mess: How Goldman Sachs Lost $1.2 Billion of Libya’s Money” >>
Citation Recipient: Jordan Robertson, Michael Riley and Andrew Willis
Affiliation: Bloomberg Businessweek
Honored Work: “How to Hack an Election”