Joe Bernard Lynam is an Irish broadcaster who is the Business Editor for Irish radio station

Newstalk Newstalk (formerly NewsTalk 106) is a national independent radio station in Ireland. It is operated by News 106 Limited, a subsidiary of Bauer Media Audio Ireland, and broadcasts under a sound broadcasting contract with the Broadcasting Aut ...

. He also presents the ''Newsroom'' on the

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...

in the United Kingdom. He was appointed in January 2022. Lynam is best known a business presenter and correspondent. Before joining Newstalk, he has served as interim business presenter on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of Talk radio, spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history fro ...

's flagship '' Today'' programme. Between 2011 and 2013, he was the business correspondent on

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream ...

's ''

Newsnight ''Newsnight'' (or ''BBC Newsnight'') is BBC Two's news and current affairs programme, providing in-depth investigation and analysis of the stories behind the day's headlines. The programme is broadcast on weekdays at 22:30. and is also avail ...

''.

Overview

Between 2008–2012, Lynam was the BBC's Weekend Business Correspondent covering economic, business, company, financial and personal finance news on the main BBC One bulletins as well as

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

, BBC World News,

BBC Five Live BBC Radio 5 Live is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that broadcasts mainly news, sport, discussion, interviews and phone-ins. It is the principal BBC radio station covering sport in the United Kingdom, broadcast ...

and the

. At the height of the

European debt crisis The European debt crisis, often also referred to as the eurozone crisis or the European sovereign debt crisis, is a multi-year debt crisis that took place in the European Union (EU) from 2009 until the mid to late 2010s. Several eurozone memb ...

2011-2012, Lynam was business correspondent with

and travelled to Cyprus, Spain, Belgium, Italy and Ireland to cover the sense of fear in many

Eurozone The euro area, commonly called eurozone (EZ), is a currency union of 19 member states of the European Union (EU) that have adopted the euro ( €) as their primary currency and sole legal tender, and have thus fully implemented EMU polic ...

countries. He was also relief Business Presenter on BBC News and

BBC Breakfast ''BBC Breakfast'' is the BBC television breakfast news programme. Produced by BBC News, the programme is broadcast on BBC One and the BBC News channel. The simulcast is presented live, originally from the BBC Television Centre, London before ...

Education

Lynam went to

St Benildus College St Benildus College is an all-boys, Catholic secondary school located in Stillorgan, Dublin, Ireland. It was established in 1966 when free secondary education was introduced in Ireland. Founded in 2005, the College was named after the De La Salle ...

in Dundrum, Dublin, and went on to study International Commerce at

University College Dublin University College Dublin (commonly referred to as UCD) ( ga, Coláiste na hOllscoile, Baile Átha Cliath) is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a collegiate university, member institution of the National University of Ireland ...

(UCD) in Dublin.

Broadcasting career

Lynam broke the story in August 2006 when a planned terror plot involving a liquid bomb on a UK plane was unearthed. At the key G20 crisis summit in London in April 2009, Lynam was the first broadcast journalist to reveal live on BBC News with Emily Maitlis that the total amount of money pledged to fix the financial system was going to be $1.1trillion Lynam is widely credited with breaking the news that Ireland was in talks with the IMF and EU to get a bailout loan in November 2010. Although this was initially denied by the

Irish government The Government of Ireland ( ga, Rialtas na hÉireann) is the cabinet that exercises executive authority in Ireland. The Constitution of Ireland vests executive authority in a government which is headed by the , the head of government. The gover ...

, it was proven to be true. In March 2012, Lynam broke the story that the UK Government was in serious talks wit
Abu Dhabi
with the view to selling it a substantial stake in RBS. This story led to a RBS share prices jumping 5% the following day In September 2012, Lynam broadcast a report on Newsnight about alleged mis-selling by several UK based investment banks in Italy and how the UK regulator, the FSA, was made aware of it but failed to act. In 2016 Joe and th
Money Box programme
on Radio 4 were awarded the prestigiou

for his work on fraud and Vishing. He was the first t
broadcast fraudsters on the phone in the act of defrauding a woman out of £12,000
In 2017, he acquired the full highly critical report for the FCA into how RBS 'mistreated its small business customer

This led to an enquiry by MPs on the Treasury Committee in the House of Commons. In 2018 he was awarded th
'Business Story of the Year'
at the Headline Money Award

Personal life

Lynam lives in West London with his Estonians, Estonian wife Riina. They have two sons. Lynam is a cousin of the Irish-born British BBC and ITV presenter

Des Lynam Desmond Michael Lynam, (born 17 September 1942) is an Irish-born television and radio presenter. In a broadcasting career spanning more than forty years, he has hosted television coverage of many of the world's major sporting events, presentin ...

. His father, also Joe Lynam, died in 2010. Joe senior had been RTÉ's show jumping correspondent in the 1980s. His mother, Christina Lynam, runs a charity Cara Malawi to which he regularly contributes. In 2010, Lynam helped raise money for the Chiltern Centre for disabled children in Greys Road,

Henley-on-Thames Henley-on-Thames ( ) is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in Oxfordshire, England, northeast of Reading, west of Maidenhead, southeast of Oxford and west of London (by road), near the tripoint of Oxfordshire, Berkshire and ...

, and

Power International Power most often refers to: * Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work" ** Engine power, the power put out by an engine ** Electric power * Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events ** Abusive power Power may ...

High Wycombe High Wycombe, often referred to as Wycombe ( ), is a market town in Buckinghamshire, England. Lying in the valley of the River Wye surrounded by the Chiltern Hills, it is west-northwest of Charing Cross in London, south-southeast of Aylesbur ...

. Before becoming a journalist, Lynam ran a chain of pubs in Germany in the 1990s and speaks fluent German. Lynam chaired a debate for the

London Irish Business Society London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major se ...

on the future of the

, again benefiting Cara Malawi.

His son's birth in a car

Joe Lynam's second son was born in the front seat of his car on the way to the hospital. He admitted that he "broke every red light" in an effort to get his wife who was at the time his girlfriend to hospital in time; he was not fast enough however – and the little boy Seán was born in his

Vauxhall Astra The Vauxhall Astra is a compact car/ small family car ( C-segment) that has been sold by Vauxhall since 1980. It is currently produced at Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, England. For its first two generations, the nameplate was applied to right- ...

estate on 21 June 2013. The story was widely covered in many media outlets including ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'' and the BBC's in house magazine ''Ariel''.

References

External links

Independent.ie

@BBC_Joe_Lynam Verified Twitter Account
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lynam, Joe Living people 1970 births Broadcasters from Dublin (city) Alumni of University College Dublin BBC newsreaders and journalists BBC World News Irish emigrants to the United Kingdom Irish reporters and correspondents Television presenters from the Republic of Ireland People educated at St Benildus College