Financial Times

The Financial Times was founded in 1888. Beneath the title of its first issue appeared the words “Without Fear and Without Favour,” a motto that has appeared on the paper’s editorial page ever since.⁠[1][1][1]

When the paper started out, newspapers were printed in black and white. In 1893, five years after its founding, the FT began printing on light salmon-colored paper, both to stand apart from competitors on the newsstand and to reduce costs by using unbleached recycled paper, which earned it the nickname “the Pink Paper.”⁠[2][1]

In 1957 the FT became part of the British Pearson group, which went on to own it for nearly 60 years.⁠[1][3]

The FT first introduced a paywall on its website in 2002, moved to a “metered” access model in 2007, and from 2015 made paid trials its primary pay model. The FT describes itself as having pioneered the reader-revenue business model.⁠[4][5]

In 2006 John Ridding became chief executive of the FT Group. The FT says that at the time it was in essence still a newspaper business supported solely by print advertising and circulation sales. Ridding spent 35 years at the FT, starting as a junior sub-editor in the newsroom and serving as a foreign correspondent in Hong Kong, Paris, and Seoul, then as managing editor, features editor, deputy editor, and Asia editor before moving to the business side.⁠[5][5][5]

Nikkei Inc. first expressed to Pearson its interest in acquiring the FT in 2012. Nikkei has said that it faced the limits of a traditional model reliant on Japan’s domestic market and print, was pursuing globalization around its English-language publication Nikkei Asian Review (later renamed Nikkei Asia) and a digital-first approach through its online edition, and saw the FT, at the forefront of globalization and digital innovation, as the ideal partner.⁠[1][1][1][1]

On July 23, 2015, Pearson announced that it had agreed to sell the FT Group to Nikkei for £844 million in cash. The FT Group being sold comprised the FT newspaper, FT.com, How to Spend It, FT Labs, FTChinese, the Confidentials, and the Financial Publishing business, whose titles include The Banker and Investors Chronicle; the deal excluded the FT Group’s London property at One Southwark Bridge and Pearson’s 50% stake in The Economist Group. Nikkei said the price included the FT’s £19 million in cash holdings, so it would actually pay £825 million.⁠[3][3][3][6]

The FT’s total print and digital circulation had risen more than 30% over the previous five years to 737,000, with digital circulation growing from 24% to 70% of the total and mobile driving almost half of all traffic; in 2014 the FT Group contributed £334 million in sales and £24 million in adjusted operating income to Pearson. Pearson chief executive John Fallon said the explosive growth of mobile and social media had brought media to an inflection point, that the FT would be best served by being part of a global digital news company, and that Pearson would now focus fully on education.⁠[3][3][3][3]

Nikkei has said its offer of £844 million was well below Pearson’s asking price of about £1 billion, and that Germany’s Axel SpringerAxel SpringerAxel Springer SE is a Berlin-based media company founded in Hamburg in 1946 by the publisher Axel Springer; it owns a number of news media brands in Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom, as well as commerce-related businesses.Open the full entry was also bidding and was at one point reported in a Bloomberg news flash to be acquiring the FT. Before Pearson’s board meeting on July 23, the two sides settled the price on a conference call, and the deal was announced simultaneously in Tokyo and London that evening.⁠[1][1][1][1]

On November 30, 2015, Pearson completed the sale of the FT Group to Nikkei for £844 million in cash. On December 1 the FT held a celebration at its London headquarters, with speeches by chief executive John Ridding, editor Lionel Barber, and Nikkei chairman Tsuneo Kita; Kita told FT staff that the editorial independence of the two companies would never change.⁠[7][1][1]

Kita later said that after the acquisition Nikkei set up a post-merger integration framework: Nikkei would hold authority over the appointment of the FT’s chief executive, editor, and directors, all M&A deals would require Nikkei’s approval, and the chief executive would give regular management updates to Nikkei’s board and submit monthly financial reports.⁠[1][1]

In January 2016, six members of Nikkei’s FT Partnership Team began working at the FT’s London headquarters. A few days later, the FT branch of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) began preparing for a strike, claiming that rights such as pensions had been harmed by the acquisition, and announced a strike date; after persistent negotiations between management and the union, the strike was averted at the last moment.⁠[1][1][1][1]

After the United Kingdom voted in a referendum on June 23, 2016, to leave the European Union, FT.com page views exceeded the previous record, set during the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, by 34%, and new subscriptions surged to six times their normal level. The vote also exposed the FT’s heavy reliance on revenue from the United Kingdom and Europe; at Nikkei’s suggestion, the FT launched a full-scale effort to develop the U.S. market, appointing a U.S.-based board member and setting U.S. reader acquisition targets as key performance indicators.⁠[1][1][1][1]

In January and February 2019 the FT published reports on alleged irregularities at the German payments company Wirecard, after which Wirecard’s shares plunged. Germany’s financial regulator, BaFin, then issued a two-month ban on short-selling Wirecard shares and later filed a criminal complaint against several people, including two FT journalists. The FT called the allegations of inappropriate behavior against its staff “baseless and false.”⁠[8][8]

On April 1, 2019, the FT announced that its paying readership had reached one million, an all-time high, one year ahead of schedule. Digital subscriptions by then accounted for more than three-quarters of its circulation, the print newspaper remained profitable, and 70% of its readers were outside the United Kingdom. According to management accounts, the FT Group recorded operating revenues of £383 million and operating profits of £25 million in 2018. That month the FT moved its global headquarters from One Southwark Bridge in London back to its historic home, Bracken House, in the City of London.⁠[4][4][4][4]

In January 2020 Roula Khalaf succeeded Lionel Barber as editor of the FT, becoming the paper’s first female editor; Nikkei made the appointment decision in November 2019. On January 16 the FT held a farewell event marking Barber’s 14-year tenure as editor, attended by more than 300 guests from business, finance, politics, the arts, and the media.⁠[1][1][9]

Khalaf joined the FT in 1995 as North Africa correspondent, having previously been a staff writer for Forbes magazine in New York; at the FT she served as Middle East editor (launching a Middle East edition and leading coverage of the Arab Spring), foreign editor, and deputy editor.⁠[10][10][10]

On March 17, 2020, as the first wave of the virus intensified, Khalaf wrote to the newsroom calling the pandemic “one of the biggest stories we will ever face.” FT page views repeatedly broke records during the pandemic, the “Coronavirus Tracker,” which visually tracked the spread of the virus, became the FT’s most-read content ever, and digital subscription revenue reached an all-time high that year; the events business FT Live launched the webinar “Global Boardroom” after just one month of preparation, attracting 52,000 viewers from 150 countries.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

At the same time, advertising revenue from corporate clients fell more sharply than expected. Ridding asked Nikkei whether the FT should immediately cut costs and restructure; Nikkei chairman Naotoshi Okada replied that it should prioritize the medium-term plan it had committed to, and the FT responded with a hiring freeze and across-the-board cost controls.⁠[1][1][1][1]

On September 3, 2020, Munich prosecutors announced that they had closed their investigation into FT journalists Dan McCrum and Stefania Palma over suspected violations of securities laws, saying the investigation had shown the reporting to be “fundamentally accurate” and had found no evidence of concrete contacts with short-sellers or of the journalists passing on insider information; BaFin said it had no objection to closing the investigation. By then, Wirecard had filed for insolvency protection in June of that year after admitting that 1.9 billion euros on its books probably did not exist.⁠[8][8][8][8]

In 2021 the FT and Nikkei opened their first joint bureau in Houston, Texas; Texas was both the center of the energy industry and an emerging hub for IT companies. The two also launched Nikkei FT the World, a paid service offering the FT’s top articles in Japanese, and collaborated technically on the AI-powered Q&A services “Ask FT” and “Ask! NIKKEI.”⁠[1][1]

On April 29, 2024, the FT announced a strategic partnership and content licensing agreement with OpenAI: ChatGPT users would see attributed summaries, quotes, and links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries, FT journalism would be used to improve OpenAI’s models, and the two would collaborate on AI products for FT readers; earlier that year the FT had bought ChatGPT Enterprise access for all its employees. Ridding said it was right that AI platforms pay publishers for the use of their material and that the FT was committed to human-led journalism.⁠[11][11][11][11][11][11]

On March 7, 2025, the FT Group announced that John Ridding, chief executive for almost 20 years, would step down on June 30 and become a special adviser to Nikkei, reporting directly to Nikkei chairman and group CEO Okada, as well as taking the non-executive title of Honorary FT Chairman. The FT said it had by then become a diverse global publishing group with annual revenues of more than £500 million, two-thirds of which came from digital subscriptions and the rest from advertising, events, research, circulation, and consultancy.⁠[5][5][5][5]

Nikkei has said that under Ridding the FT’s subscriber base grew from about 750,000 at the time of the 2015 acquisition to around 1.5 million, and that revenue surpassed £500 million in 2024. Ridding also managed Pearson’s sale of the FT to Nikkei and serves as a special executive director of Nikkei.⁠[1][1][5]

In July 2025 chief commercial officer Jon Slade became chief executive of the FT. Slade has worked at the FT Group for more than two decades and joined the group management board in 2014; as chief commercial officer he oversaw consumer and corporate subscriptions, global advertising sales, branded content, newspaper operations and retail, and the consulting arm FT Strategies.⁠[12][12][1]

As of October 2026, the FT Group employs more than 2,900 people worldwide, including 700 journalists in 40 countries. Besides the Financial Times, the group includes FT Specialist, which serves niche audiences; FT Chinese; Longitude, a provider of thought leadership and research services; and Headspring, an executive education joint venture with Spain’s IE Business School.⁠[13][14][14][14][14]

The management board, responsible for group strategy and day-to-day management, is led by chief executive Jon Slade and editor Roula Khalaf and includes Nikkei executive vice president Daisuke Arakawa. Former Nikkei chairman Kita has said that the FT’s paid subscriptions have surpassed 1.5 million.⁠[15][1]

The FT’s services include personal subscriptions; FT Professional for businesses, governments, and educational institutions; the specialist titles of FT Specialist; the advertising and branded content businesses FT Commercial and FT Studio; the conference business FT Live; a board director program; and the digital transformation consultancy FT Strategies.⁠[16][16][16][16][16][16][16]

The FT’s journalism is subject to a self-regulation regime under its Editorial Code of Practice, compliance with which is an obligation for all editorial staff and contributors; it has also adopted a Reader Charter and a Commercial Charter governing its dealings with advertisers, and it labels third-party-funded content as either “Supported by” (commercially supported independent journalism) or “Partner Content” (commercially produced content). In its AI principles, the FT commits to human-led journalism and the protection of its intellectual property.⁠[17][13][17][17]

Financial Times: Official website: https://www.ft.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[13]

FT Group corporate website: Official website: https://aboutus.ft.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[13]

FT Chinese: Official website: https://www.ftchinese.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

X: Public account: https://x.com/FT (opens in a new window)⁠[19]