Financial Times will sell for $ 1.3 billion

The British company Pearson has already agreed to sell the Financial Times Group Inc to the Japanese company Nikkei. The media corporation from Japan agreed to acquire the Financial Times for $ 1.3 billion, Lenta reports . The deal is scheduled to close in the fourth quarter of this year, after obtaining regulatory approval. Megamozg journalists reported about the possible sale of the publication a few days before the actual conclusion of the transaction.

The Financial Times Group Inc group includes, in addition to the Financial Times, other publications, plus the group owns 50% in the Economist Group (publishes The Economist magazine). The Nikkei deal does not include the sale of shares in Pearson and FT real estate in London.

The number of subscribers to the FT print edition and its online version has now reached 737 thousand. Base online subscribers is 70% of their total number. In April, the circulation of the printed version of the FT was 213 thousand copies.

According to the head of Pearson, John Fallon, now the development of the newspaper has reached a turning point, largely due to the active growth of mobile and social media resources. “In the new environment, the best way to guarantee FT’s journalistic and commercial success is to make it part of a global digital information company,” Fallon commented on the sale of the publication.