Nikkei Buys Financial Times Group for $1.3 Billion

Nikkei Inc’s flagship newspaper, The Nikkei, has a readership of more than 3 million people for its morning edition alone.

The cash deal is subject to regulatory approval and expected to complete in the fourth quarter of this year.

Pearson says it wants to focus its attention on its education publishing and testing business, a sector in which it’s a world leader.

The FT has seen its circulation across print and digital rise more than 30% over the last five years to 737,000, with digital circulation growing to represent 70% of the total and mobile driving nearly half of all traffic.

British publisher Pearson is selling the paper to Japanese media company Nikkei.

The Financial Times has a new owner.

In Thursday’s regular trading session, Pearson shares are trading on the LSE at 1,231.35 pence, up 22.35 pence or 1.85% on a volume of 4.77 million shares. Asked about the FT’s appeal, Steve Schifferes, professor of financial journalism at London’s City University, said: “The FT has made one of the more successful adaptations to the web, driven by its ability to sell online subscriptions based on its unique information”.

The chairman and group CEO of Nikkei, Tsuneo Kita, said he was “extremely proud” to be teaming up with the FT.

The sale includes the Financial Times newspaper, FT.com, How to Spend It, FT Laps, FTChinese, the Confidentials and Financial Publishing. The latest sale took many media industry watchers by surprise, as Nikkei’s last-minute offer sidelined German publisher Axel Springer, widely viewed as the likely buyer recently. Others rumored to be interested in buying the paper had included media company Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, and Germany’s Axel Springer.

The broadsheet rose to become Japan’s premier economic daily, sponsoring – as the Financial Times once did – the country’s main stock index, the Nikkei.

Pearson has been tackling a slowdown in its education business due to declining college enrollments in the US and falling textbook sales. Group operations range from books and magazines to digital media, database services, broadcasting and other activities such as economic/cultural events. However, it has struggled to expand from its home market.