Nikkei is not looking for an immediate return from the company’s £844m purchase of the Financial Times and will judge the success of the deal over the next 10 to 20 years, reports Matthew Garrahan of the Financial Times.
Garrahan writes, “In a discussion with John Ridding, chief executive of the FT, and James Harding, director of BBC News, Mr Kita said the two companies would collaborate on digital expansion and third-party content distribution via platforms such as Facebook.
“‘Print media is shrinking dramatically in Japan,’ he said, adding that Nikkei’s revenues from print advertising had halved in the past eight years and lost 300,000 print sales during the same period.
“Nikkei has a print circulation of 2.8m and 480,000 digital subscribers. The FT has a total paid-for readership of 780,000.
“Mr Ridding said three-quarters of the FT’s readership came from digital. ‘The FT has reached a tipping point in its transformation, with revenues from digital now matching print,’ he said.”
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