Laura Kuenssberg is returning to the BBC to join Newsnight only two years after leaving the corporation for ITV.

The journalist, currently Business Editor of ITV News, will join the flagship BBC Two current affairs show as Chief Correspondent and will regularly present the programme.

The show's editor Ian Katz said: "I'm thrilled that Laura will be joining Newsnight. She's widely admired as one of the most authoritative and accessible broadcasters in the country and has a brilliant nose for a story, as well as a wealth of experience across a range of different areas. She'll add real firepower to Newsnight's reporting team as well as a fresh and compelling voice to the show's presenter line-up."

Kuenssberg, 37, said she was "truly delighted to be joining a reinvigorated Newsnight".

She said: "It's been a long held ambition of mine to work full time on the programme and I can't wait to get started."

The journalist joined ITV in September 2011 after a 10-year-long stint at the corporation where she rose to be the BBC News Channel's Chief Political Correspondent. She starts at Newsnight in February.

She was born in Italy, while her father, businessman Nick Kuenssberg, was working there for Coats Viyella.

She grew up in Glasgow, and studied history at Edinburgh University, followed by a journalism course at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

Her maternal grandfather was Lord Robertson, an eminent High Court judge.