Nikkei breaks out of Japan with FT buy

Nikkei’s $1.3bn (€1.18bn) purchase of the Financial Times from Britain’s Pearson marks the culmination of decades of attempts by the Japanese household name to break into mainstream English-language media.

The Japanese media group’s flagship newspaper enjoys a must-read reputation for financial news in Japan and, with a circulation of more than 3m, bills itself as the world’s biggest selling business daily.

However, it has remained unable to break out from its home shores since starting life in 1876 as a commodities pricing report published by a trading company.