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Outlet profile

Financial Times

UK/global center, economically liberal (pro-free trade, pro-market)

Owned byNikkei, Inc. — a Japanese media and publishing company that acquired the FT from Pearson plc in July 2015 for £844 million (approximately $1.32 billion)
FundingPrimarily reader subscriptions (digital and print); supplemented by advertising revenue. The FT has surpassed 1 million paid digital subscribers and has shifted heavily toward a subscription-first model.
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

The Financial Times was founded in January 1888 in London as the London Financial Guide, rebranded as the Financial Times within a month, and printed on its now-iconic salmon-colored paper to stand out on newsstands. In 1945, media proprietor Brendan Bracken merged it with its rival the Financial News, combining the FT's larger circulation with the Financial News's editorial talent. British conglomerate Pearson plc acquired the paper in 1957 and owned it for nearly six decades, during which the FT expanded into a globally respected business and financial newspaper. Editor Gordon Newton (1949–1973) professionalized the newsroom by directly recruiting university graduates, establishing the rigorous editorial culture the paper retains today. In July 2015, Pearson sold the FT to Nikkei, Inc. — publisher of Japan's Nikkei Shimbun, the world's largest financial newspaper — for £844 million, marking a notable shift to Japanese ownership while the FT's editorial independence was contractually guaranteed. Roula Khalaf became editor-in-chief in 2020, the first woman to hold the role in the paper's history. The FT's editorial stance is rooted in classical economic liberalism: it strongly favors free trade, open markets, and multilateral institutions, positions that have made its coverage consistently skeptical of the Trump administration's tariffs, protectionism, and withdrawal from international frameworks.

Sources

  1. Financial Times — Wikipedia
  2. Nikkei, Inc. — Wikipedia
  3. Nikkei Stirs Global Media Waters in Acquiring the Financial Times — Nippon.com
  4. Financial Times Media Bias — AllSides
  5. Financial Times Bias and Reliability — Ad Fontes Media
  6. How FT reached 1M subscribers through a digital subscription model — FT Strategies
  7. Financial Times Political Stance: A Deep Dive — Steve Harvey FM / Nation

Profile compiled 2026-08-16; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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