Financial Times

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The 2003-03-19 front page of the Financial Times
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet

Owner	Pearson PLC
Editor	Lionel Barber
Founded	1888
Political allegiance	Liberal
Headquarters	One Southwark Bridge London, SE1 9HL 020 7873 3000 United Kingdom (also several international offices)

Website: www.ft.com

The Financial Times (FT) is an international business newspaper printed on distinctive salmon pink broadsheet paper. The periodical is printed in 23 cities: London, Leeds, Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Milan, Madrid, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Washington DC, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Dubai, Johannesburg and Istanbul.

1 History
2 Content
- 2.1 How To Spend It
- 2.2 Opinions
3 Ownership and Related products
4 People
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

The FT was launched as the London Financial Guide on January 9, 1888, by Horatio Bottomley, renaming itself the Financial Times on February 13 of the same year. Describing itself as the friend of "The Honest Financier and the Respectable Broker", it was initially published as a four page journal from its headquarters in London. The initial readership was the financial community of the City of London. The Financial Times soon established itself as the sober but reliable "stockbroker's Bible", with its only rival being the slightly older and more daring Financial News. In 1893, the FT turned salmon pink — a masterstroke that made it immediately distinguishable from its competitor, the similarly named Financial News (founded 1884). From their initial rivalry, the two papers merged in 1945 to form a single six-page newspaper. The Financial Times brought with it a higher circulation, while the Financial News provided enormous editorial talent.

Over the years, the newspaper grew in size, readership and breadth of coverage. It also established a network of correspondents in major cities around the world, reflecting early moves in the world economy towards globalisation.

As cross-border trade and capital flows increased rapidly during the 1970s, the FT began a programme of international expansion, facilitated by developments in technology and the growing acceptance of English as the international language of business.

On 1 January 1979, the first FT to be printed outside the UK rolled off the presses in Frankfurt. Since then, with its greatly increased international coverage, the FT has become a truly global business newspaper, printed in 23 locations worldwide, with 3 international editions to serve the needs of its readers in the UK, Continental Europe, the US and Asia.

The European edition is distributed in Continental Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia. It is printed Monday to Saturday at 5 strategically located print centres across Europe. Thanks to its extensive network of correspondents reporting from all the political and commercial nerve centres of Europe, the FT is widely regarded to be the premier news source involving the European Union, the Euro, and European corporate affairs.

In 1997 the FT launched the US edition, which is now printed in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, Orlando and Washington, DC. In March of 2006 the FT's US circulation was 137,845.^[1]

In September 1998, the FT became the first UK-based newspaper to sell more copies internationally than within the UK. Worldwide circulation stands at 432,548 (Source: ABC July 2006), with global readership estimated at over 1.6 million people in more than 140 countries.

Since 2000, the FT publishes a German language edition, Financial Times Deutschland, with its own news coverage. Its circulation in 2003 was approximately 90,000.

The current editor of the FT is Lionel Barber, who took over from Andrew Gowers in the autumn of 2005, who reportedly left over strategic differences.

[edit] Content

The FT reports extensively on business and features extensive share and financial product listings. It also has a sizeable network of international reporters – about 110 of its 475 journalists are based outside the UK. The FT is usually in two sections, the first section covers national and international news, while the second section covers company and markets news.

[edit] How To Spend It

How To Spend It magazine is a monthly magazine that usually gets published with the Financial Times Weekend Edition. The glossy large magazine has won the hearts of many Weekend Edition subscribers, with its high detail on the latest in the glitz and glamour of the high-life. Its articles mostly concern high quality products: yachts, mansions, apartments, designs, horlogerie, haute couture, automobiles, fashion advice and columns by important individuals in the arts in gardening, food, the hotel business, and travel industries. It regularly themes its issues, such as "Travelling Unravelled", "A Passion for Fashion", "Superior Interiors", and its annual "Christmas Unwrapped". How To Spend It has won numerous prizes for being the best newspaper supplement of the year.

The Financial Times building

[edit] Opinions

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The Financial Times is normally seen as centre-right/liberal, although to the left of its principal competitor, The Wall Street Journal. It advocates free markets and is generally in favour of globalisation. During the 1980s it supported Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's monetarist policies. However, it has recently seemed to align itself with Labour in the UK. It also has been quite supportive, until recently, of Gordon Brown, the current British Chancellor of the Exchequer. FT editorials have tended to be pro-European Union, though often taking a critical view. Several members of British far-left groups, however, do work for the paper, and it is popular among the left (Noam Chomsky cites it as a useful newspaper)

[edit] Ownership and Related products

FT Knowledge is an associated company, through Pearson PLC, which offers educational products and services to a variety of customers. 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.

Financial Times Group includes the Financial Times, FT.com, a 50% shareholding in The Economist, Interactive Data Corporation (a market data provider) , ownership of Les Échos (a Paris-based financial daily), 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 in the UK of Investors Chronicle (a personal finance magazine), The Banker, Money Management and Financial Adviser (a publication targeted at professional advisers).

The Financial Times also ran a business related game called "In the Pink" (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.

[edit] People

Lionel Barber (Editor)
Richard Tomkins (Consumer Industries Editor)
Lucy Kellaway (Management Columnist)
Martin Lukes (Management Diarist)
Tim Harford (Dear Economist)
Martin Wolf (Chief Economics Commentator)
Jurek Martin (Columnist and former Washington Bureau Chief)

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, is now editor of The Times. Will Lewis, a former New York correspondent and News Editor for the FT, is the new 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, 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 an MP in 2005 – he is widely tipped to become a minister. 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.