Pearson agreed to sell the Financial Times to Japanese media company Nikkei for $1.3 billion in cash. The publisher owned the traditional financial newspaper for nearly 60 years.
Explaining the decision to sell FT Pearson CEO John Fallon said in the press release that
“[...] we’ve reached an inflection point in media, driven by the explosive growth of mobile and social. In this new environment, the best way to ensure the FT’s journalistic and commercial success is for it to be part of a global, digital news company.
Pearson will now be 100% focused on our global education strategy. The world of education is changing profoundly and we see huge opportunity to grow our business through increasing access to high quality education globally.”