The Financial Times (FT) is one of
the world's leading business news and information organisations. The
FT is owned by
Pearson PLC.
The FT has an average daily readership of 2.2 million
people worldwide (PwC
audited figures, November 2011). FT.com has 4.5 million registered
users and over 285,000 digital subscribers, as well as 600,000
paying users. FT Chinese has more than 1.7 million registered users.[3]
The world editions of the Financial Times newspaper had a
combined average daily circulation of 293,000 copies (88,000 for the
British version of the newspaper), for the period 1–28 October 2012.[4]
The average daily circulation of all the various world editions of
the Financial Times newspaper in February 2013 was 269 thousand
copies.
Founded in 1888 by James Sheridan and
Horatio Bottomley, the Financial Times competed with four
other finance-oriented newspapers, in 1945 absorbing the last, the
Financial News, which had been founded in 1884. The FT
specialises in UK and international business and financial news, and
is printed as a
broadsheet on
light salmon paper.
History
The front page of the
Financial Times on 13
February 1888
The FT was launched as the London Financial Guide
on 9 January 1888, renaming itself the Financial Times on 13
February the same year. Describing itself as the friend of "The
Honest Financier and the Respectable Broker", it was a four-page
journal. The readership was the financial community of the
City of London. Its only rival being the slightly older and more
daring Financial News. On January 2, 1893, the FT
turned light salmon pink to distinguish it from the similarly named
Financial News. From initial rivalry, the two papers were
merged by
Brendan Bracken in 1945 to form a single six-page newspaper. The
Financial Times brought a higher circulation while the
Financial News provided editorial talent. Lex column was
also introduced from Financial News.[5]
Pearson bought the paper in 1957.[6]
Over the years, the newspaper grew in size, readership and
breadth of coverage. It established correspondents in cities around
the world, reflecting early moves in the
world economy towards
globalisation. As cross-border trade and capital flows increased
during the 1970s, the FT began international expansion,
facilitated by developments in technology and the growing acceptance
of English as the language of business. On 1 January 1979, the first
FT (Continental Europe's edition) was printed outside the UK,
in Frankfurt. Since then, with increased international coverage, the
FT has become a global newspaper, printed in 22 locations
with five international editions to serve the UK, continental
Europe, the U.S., Asia and the Middle East.[7]
The European edition is distributed in continental Europe and
Africa. It is printed Monday to Saturday at five centres across
Europe. Thanks to correspondents reporting from all the centres of
Europe, the FT is regarded as the premier news source
involving the
European Union, the
Euro,
and European corporate affairs.[8]
In 1994 FT launched luxury lifestyle magazine How To
Spend It. In 2009 The Financial Times launched How To
Spend It magazine’s standalone website.[9]
On 13 May 1995 the Financial Times group made its first
foray into the online world with the launch of FT.com.[10]
This provided a high summary of news from around the globe and was
supplemented in February 1996 with the launch of stock prices
followed in spring 1996 by the second generation site. The site was
funded by advertising and contributed to the online advertising
market in the UK in the late 1990s. Between 1997 and 2000 the site
underwent several revamps and changes of strategy as the FT Group
and Pearson reacted to changes online. FT introduced
subscription services in 2002.[11]
FT.com is one of the few UK news sites successfully operating on
subscriptions.
In 1997, the FT launched the U.S. edition, printed in New
York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, Orlando
and Washington, D.C., although the newspaper was first printed
outside New York City in 1985. In September 1998, the FT
became the first UK-based newspaper to sell more copies
internationally than within the UK.
In 2000, the Financial Times started publishing a German
language edition,
Financial Times Deutschland, with news and editorial team
based in Hamburg. Its initial circulation in 2003 was 90,000.
Originally a joint venture with German publishing firm
Gruner + Jahr, FT eventually sold its 50% stake to its
German partner in January 2008.[12]
FT Deutschland never made a profit and is said to have
accumulated losses of €250m over 12 years. The German business daily
closed on 7 December 2012.[13][14]
The Financial Times launched a new weekly supplement for
the fund management industry on February 4, 2002. FT fund
management (FTfm) was and still is distributed with the FT
newspaper every Monday. FTfm is the world's largest circulation fund
management title.[15]
Since 2005, the FT has sponsored the annual
Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.[16]
On 23 April 2007, the FT unveiled "refreshed" version of
the newspaper and introduced new slogan "We Live in Financial
Times".[17]
In 2007 FT also pioneered
metered paywall, which lets visitors to its site read limited
number of free articles a month before asking them to pay.[18]
For year later FT launched innovative
HTML5
mobile web app. Smart phones and tablets now drives 12% of
subscriptions and 19% of traffic to FT.com.[19]
In 2012 the number of digital subscribers passed the circulation of
the newspaper for the first time and FT drawn almost half of
its revenue from subscription, not advertising. “It’s a big shift”,
said FT's
Gillian Tett.[20][21]
Since 2010 FT is available on
Bloomberg Terminal. Financial Times said: “This agreement
opens up another large and hugely significant channel to the FT.”
[22]
Audience
According to authoritative Global Capital Markets Survey, which
measures readership habits amongst most senior financial decision
makers in the world’s largest financial institutions, the
Financial Times is considered the most important business read,
reaching 36% of the universe, 11% more than
The Wall Street Journal, its main rival.
The Economist, which is 50% owned by FT, reach 32% of
these influentials. FT's
The Banker also proved vital reading, reaching 24% of these
respondents.[23]
Besides FT was regarded as the most credible publication in
reporting financial and economic issues amongst Worldwide
Professional Investment Community audience. The Economist was
also rated the #3 most credible title by most influential
professional investors (those who personally managed asset funds
worth $5 billion or more), while WSJ was #2 out of all media
measured in the study.[24]
Content
The FT is split into two sections. The first section
covers domestic and international news, editorial commentary on
politics and economics from FT journalists such as
Martin Wolf,
Gillian Tett and
Edward Luce, and opinion pieces from globally renowned leaders,
policymakers, academics and commentators. The second section
consists of financial data and news about companies and markets.
About 110 of its 475 journalists are outside the UK.
The Lex
column
The Lex column is a daily feature on the back page of the
first section. It features analyses and opinions covering global
economics and finance. The FT calls Lex its
agenda-setting column. The column first appeared on Monday, 1
October 1945. The origin of the name may stand for Lex Mercatoria
a Latin expression meaning literally "merchant law". It was
conceived by
Hargreaves Parkinson for the Financial News in the 1930s
and moved to the Financial Times when the two merged.
Lex boasts some distinguished alumni who have gone on to
make careers in business and government – including Nigel Lawson
(former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer), Richard Lambert
(CBI director and former member of the Bank of England's monetary
policy committee), Martin Taylor (former chief executive of
Barclays), John Makinson (chairman and chief executive of Penguin),
John Gardiner (former chairman of Tesco), David Freud (former UBS
banker and Labour adviser, now a Conservative peer), John Kingman
(former head of UKFI and a banker at Rothschild’s), George Graham
(RBS banker), Andrew Balls (head of European portfolio management at
PIMCO) and
Jo Johnson (Conservative Member of Parliament for Orpington).[25]
FT Weekend
The FT publishes a Saturday edition of the newspaper
called the Financial Times Weekend. It consists of
international economic and political news, Companies & Markets,
Life & Arts, House & Home and FT Magazine.
How to Spend
It
How to Spend It is a monthly magazine published with FT
Weekend. Founded and launched by Julia Carrick[26]
with Lucia van der Post as founding editor,[27]
its articles concern
luxury goods such as
yachts,
mansions,
apartments,
horlogerie,
haute couture and automobiles, as well as fashion and columns by
individuals in the arts, gardening, food, and hotel and travel
industries. To celebrate its 15th anniversary, FT launched
the on-line version of this publication howtospendit.com[28]
on 3 October 2009.[27]
Some media commentators were taken aback by the online launch of
a site supporting
conspicuous consumption during the financial
austerity of the
late-2000s recession.[27]
The magazine has been derided in rival publishers' blogs, as
"repellent" in the Telegraph[29]
and "a latter-day
Ab Fab manual" in the Guardian.[30]
A 'well-thumbed' copy of the supplement was found when rebel forces
broke into
Colonel Gaddafi's Tripoli compound during the 2011
Libyan civil war.[31]
Editorial stance
The FT advocates
free markets[citation
needed] and is in favour of
globalisation. During the 1980s it supported
Margaret Thatcher and
Ronald Reagan's
monetarist policies.[citation
needed] It showed support with the
Labour Party in the UK, starting with the
1992 general election, when
Neil Kinnock was attempting for the second time to return Labour
to government for the first time since they had been ousted from
power in
1979.[citation
needed] It was also supportive of
Gordon Brown, the former British
Prime Minister.
FT editorials tend to be pro-European
Union, although they no longer support membership of the
Euro.[32]
The FT was firmly opposed to the
Iraq War.[32]
In the
2008 United States presidential election, the Financial Times
endorsed
Barack Obama, although raising concerns over tones of
protectionism, the FT praised his ability to 'engage the
country’s attention', his calls for a bipartisan politics, as well
as his plans for 'comprehensive
health-care reform'.[33]
In the
2010 general election, the FT was receptive towards
Liberal Democrat positions on civil liberties and political
reform and praised the then Labour leader, Gordon Brown, for his
response to the
global financial crisis but on balance, backed the
Conservatives, though questioning their
Euroscepticism.[34]
In the
2012 US election, just like in
2008, over
John McCain, the FT favoured Barack Obama over
Mitt Romney.[35]
In 2010, the Wall Street Journal dubbed the FT an
"orthodox Keynesian company".[36]
An article in the FT in November 2011 referred to the opinion
pages of the Wall Street Journal as "the conservative bible".[37]
Ownership and related products
The Financial Times Group is a division of Pearson PLC. It
includes the Financial Times, FT.com, FT Search Inc., the
publishing imprint FT Press, a 50% shareholding in
The Economist,
Mergermarket (an online intelligence reporting family) and
numerous joint ventures including
Vedomosti in Russia. In addition, the FT Group has a unit
called FT Business which is a provider of specialist
information on retail, personal and institutional finance segments.
It is a publisher of
The Banker,
Money Management and
Financial Adviser (a publication targeted at professional
advisers), This is Africa, fDi intelligence and Professional Wealth
Management (PWM).[3]
The Financial Times Group announced the beta launch of newssift[38]
FT Search, Inc. in March 2009. Newssift.com is a next generation
search tool for business professionals indexing millions of articles
from thousands of global business news sources, not just the FT. The
Financial Times Group acquired Money Media[39]
(an online news and commentary site for the industry) and
Exec-Appointments[40]
(an online recruitment specialist site for the executive jobs
market). The FT Group had a 13.85% stake in Business Standard Ltd of
India, the publisher of the
Business Standard. FT Group has since sold this stake in April
2008 and has entered into an agreement with
Network 18 to launch Financial Times in India,[41][42]
though it is speculated that they may find it difficult to do so, as
the brand Financial Times in India is owned by
The Times Group,[43]
the publisher of
The Times of India and
The Economic Times. The group also publishes
America's Intelligence Wire, a daily general
newswire service.[44]
The Financial Times’ Financial Publishing division
provides print and online content for consumer and professional
financial audiences. Examples of publications and services include:
Investors Chronicle, a personal finance magazine and website; FT
Money, a weekly personal finance supplement in FT Weekend; FT
Wealth, a magazine for the global high-net-worth community and FTfm,
a weekly review of the global fund management industry. Money-Media,
a separate arm of Financial Publishing, delivers a range of digital
information services for fund management professionals around the
globe, including: Ignites, Ignites Europe, Ignites Asia, FundFire
and BoardIQ. Intelligence, includes publications and events for the
European pensions industry (Pensions Management, Pensions Week and
schemeXpert.com). Financial Publishing also provides local language
services through Nordic Region Pensions & Investment News (nrpn),
Nederlands Pensioen & Beleggingsnieuws (npn), Deutsche Pensions &
Investmentnachrichten (dpn), Schweizer Pensions &
Investmentnachrichten (spn), The group also publishes MandateWire, a
financial information company that provides sales and market
intelligence for US and European investment professionals.[3]
FT Knowledge is an associated company which offers
educational products and services. FT Knowledge has offered the
"Introducing the City" course (which is a series of Wednesday night
lectures/seminars, as well as weekend events) during the Autumn and
Spring since 2000. FT Predict is a
prediction market contest the Financial Times is hosting
that allows users to buy and sell contracts based on future
financial, political, and news-driven events by spending fictional
Financial Times Dollars (FT$). Based on the assumptions displayed in
James Surowiecki's
The Wisdom of Crowds, this contest allows people to use
prediction markets to observe future occurrences while competing for
weekly and monthly prizes.
The Financial Times also ran a business related game
called "In the Pink" (a phrase meaning "in good health", also a
reference to the colour of the newspaper and to the phrase "in the
red" meaning to be making a loss). The player is put in the virtual
role of Chief Executive and the goal is to have the highest
profit when the game closes. The winner of the game (the player
who makes the highest profit) will receive a real monetary prize of
£10,000. The game ran from 1 May to 28 June 2006.
Indices
The Financial Times collates and publishes a number of
financial market indices, which reflect the changing value of the
constituents. The longest running of these was the former
Financial News Index, started on 1 July 1935 by the Financial
News. The FT published a similar index, which was
replaced by the Financial News Index—and the Financial
News Index was then renamed the Financial Times (FT) Index
on 1 January 1947. The index started as an index of industrial
shares, and companies with dominant overseas interests were
excluded, such as the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later
BP),
British-American Tobacco,
Lever Brothers (later
Unilever) and
Shell. The oil and financial sectors were included decades
later.[45]
The
FTSE All-Share Index, the first one of the FTSE series of
indices, was created in 1962, comprising the largest 594 UK
companies by market capitalisation.[45]
The letters F-T-S-E represent that FTSE is a joint venture between
the Financial Times (F-T) and the
London Stock Exchange (S-E). On 13 February 1984 the
FTSE 100 was introduced, representing about eighty percent of
the London Stock Exchange's value.[45]
In 1995
FTSE Group was made an independent company. The first of several
overseas offices was opened in New York City in 1999, Paris in early
2000, and Hong Kong,
Frankfurt, and San Francisco in 2001.
Madrid
was opened 2002, and Tokyo in 2003.
Other well-known FTSE indices include the
FTSE 350 Index, the
FTSE SmallCap Index, the
FTSE AIM UK 50 Index and
FTSE AIM 100 Index as well as the
FTSE AIM All-Share Index for stocks, and the FTSE UK Gilt
Indices for government bonds.
People
In July 2006, the FT announced a "New Newsroom" project to
integrate the newspaper more closely with FT.com. At the same time
it announced plans to cut the editorial staff from 525 to 475. In
August, it announced that all the required job cuts had been
achieved through voluntary layoffs.
A number of former FT journalists have gone on to
high-profile jobs in journalism, politics and business.
Robert Thomson, previously the paper's US managing editor, was
the editor of
The Times and is now the publisher of the Wall Street
Journal.
Will Lewis, a former New York correspondent and News Editor for
the FT, is the current editor of the
Daily Telegraph.
Dominic Lawson went on to become editor of the
Sunday Telegraph until he was sacked in 2005.
Andrew Adonis, a former education correspondent, became an
adviser on education to
Tony Blair, who was the British prime minister, and was given a
job as an education minister and a seat in the
House of Lords after the 2005 election.
Ed
Balls became chief economic adviser to the Treasury, working
closely with
Gordon Brown, the
chancellor of the exchequer (or finance minister) before being
elected as a Member of Parliament in 2005, and has been
Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families since July
2007.
Bernard Gray, a former defence correspondent and Lex columnist,
was chief executive of publishing company CMP before becoming chief
executive of TSL Education, publisher of the
Times Educational Supplement. David Jones, at one time the
FT Night Editor, then became Head of IT. He was a key figure in the
newspaper's transformation from hot metal to electronic composition
and then onto full-page pagination in the 1990s. He went onto become
Head of Technology for the Trinity Mirror Group.
Sir Geoffrey Owen was Editor, Financial Times,
1981–1990. Thereafter he joined the London School of Economics –
Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) as Director of Business Policy
in 1991 and was appointed Senior Fellow, Institute of Management, in
1997. He continues his work there. During his tenure at the FT he
had to deal with rapid technological change and issues related to
it, for example, repetitive strain injury (RSI) issue which affected
dozens of FT journalists, reporters and staff in the late 1980s.
Editors
See also
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External links
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