Japan's Nikkei has agreed to buy the FT Group, publisher of the Financial Times newspaper, from Britain's Pearson for 844 million pounds ($1.31 billion) in cash, the two companies said on Thursday.
The deal did not include the FT Group's 50 percent stake in The Economist magazine. Pearson said the FT Group contributed 334 million pounds of sales and 24 million pounds of adjusted operating income in 2014.
Nikkei describes itself as the largest independent business media group in Asia.
Timeline
1884 - The Financial News is established by London-born journalist and entrepreneur Harry Marks on his return from the United States
1888 - The Financial Times is launched as the friends of the "Honest Financier and the Respectable Broker", with Leopold Graham as editor and its offices established on Telegraph Street
1891 - FT newspaper sales soar 73 percent from 1890
1893 - The newspaper is first printed on pink paper
1910 - FT introduces a magazine page on Fridays
1919 - Berry Bros, owners of the Sunday Times and, later, the Daily Telegraph, take control of the FT
1935 - A 30-share index is introduced in the FT
1945 - Brendan Bracken, owner of the Financial News, buys the FT and merges the two
1953 - "Industry", "Commerce" and "Public Affairs" are introduced to the paper's masthead, reflecting its increased scope of coverage
1957 - The FT is purchased by Pearson, originally a Yorkshire building and engineering company that later branched out into banking, manufacturing, local newspapers and book publishing
1959 - FT circulation tops 100,000
1979 - A European edition starts printing in Frankfurt and circulation reaches 200,000 copies a day
1988 - FT acquires French titles Les Echos and L'Expansion
1989 - FT moves into current Thames-side offices at Southwark Bridge
1995 - FT.com website is launched
2000 - Launch of German-language FT Deutschland, a venture with Gruener + Jahr
2001 - Circulation hits 500,000 copies a day
2003 - Asia edition launched in print and online
2012 - Digital subscriptions exceed global print circulation
2013 - Launch of fastFT, providing market-moving news and views
2015 - Pearson, now the largest education company and the largest book publisher in the world, agrees to sell FT Group to Nikkei Inc. of Japan
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