New chairman of FT parent refuses to rule out sale

The Independent newspaper in England is quoting the new chairman of Financial Times parent Pearson as saying that the long-rumored sale of the business newspaper is something to be discussed by the board, not in the newspapers.

Independent reporter Saeed Shah quotes chairman Glen Moreno as saying, “”I admire the newspaper [the FT]. The immediate task is to restore it to serious profitability.”

“The stance was in stark contrast with his predecessor as chairman, Dennis Stevenson, who at last year’s AGM said the FT would be kept by Pearson. ‘Rumours of us selling the FT are completely untrue. We have no intentions to do so,’ he told the event in 2005. Pearson’s long-serving chief executive Marjorie Scardino, who once famously said the FT would be sold ‘over my dead body’, declined to make any sort of comment on the newspaper’s future.

“‘I’m not answering that,’ she said.”

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