Japanese media group Nikkei has agreed to buy the Financial Times from Britain's Pearson for $1.3 billion, putting one of the world's premier business newspapers in the hands of a company influential at home but little known outside Japan.
The deal, struck after Nikkei beat Germany's Axel Springer to the prize, marks the biggest acquisition by a Japanese media organization and is a coup for the employee-owned firm which lends its name to the main Japanese stock market index.
In the Financial Times it has acquired an authoritative global newspaper that commands strong loyalty from its readers and has coped better than others with the shift to online publishing. It was one of the first newspapers to successfully charge for access to its website.