Wikipedia [visit link] tells
us:
"The FT was launched as the London
Financial Guide on 9 January 1888, renaming itself the Financial Times on 13
February the same year. Describing itself as the friend of "The Honest Financier
and the Respectable Broker", it was a four-page journal. The readership was the
financial community of the City of London. Its only rival being the slightly
older and more daring Financial News. In 1893, the FT turned light salmon pink
to distinguish it from the similarly named Financial News. From initial rivalry,
the two papers were merged by Brendan Bracken in 1945 to form a single six-page
newspaper. The Financial Times brought a higher circulation while the Financial
News provided editorial talent. Lex column was also introduced from Financial
News. Pearson bought the paper in 1957.
Over the years, the newspaper grew
in size, readership and breadth of coverage. It established correspondents in
cities around the world, reflecting early moves in the world economy towards
globalisation. As cross-border trade and capital flows increased during the
1970s, the FT began international expansion, facilitated by developments in
technology and the growing acceptance of English as the language of business. On
1 January 1979, the first FT (Continental Europe's edition) was printed outside
the UK, in Frankfurt. Since then, with increased international coverage, the FT
has become a global newspaper, printed in 22 locations with five international
editions to serve the UK, continental Europe, the U.S., Asia and the Middle
East.
The European edition is distributed
in continental Europe and Africa. It is printed Monday to Saturday at five
centres across Europe. Thanks to correspondents reporting from all the centres
of Europe, the FT is regarded as the premier news source involving the European
Union, the Euro, and European corporate affairs.
In 1994 FT launched luxury
lifestyle magazine How To Spend It. In 2009 The Financial Times launched How To
Spend It magazine’s standalone website.
On 13 May 1995 the Financial Times
group made its first foray into the online world with the launch of FT.com. This
provided a high summary of news from around the globe and was supplemented in
February 1996 with the launch of stock prices followed in spring 1996 by the
second generation site. The site was funded by advertising and contributed to
the online advertising market in the UK in the late 1990s. Between 1997 and 2000
the site underwent several revamps and changes of strategy as the FT Group and
Pearson reacted to changes online. FT introduced subscription services in 2002.
FT.com is one of the few UK news sites successfully operating on
subscriptions.
In 1997, the FT launched the U.S.
edition, printed in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas,
Atlanta, Orlando and Washington, D.C., although the newspaper was first printed
outside New York City in 1985. In September 1998, the FT became the first
UK-based newspaper to sell more copies internationally than within the
UK.
In 2000, the Financial Times
started publishing a German language edition, Financial Times Deutschland, with
news and editorial team based in Hamburg. Its initial circulation in 2003 was
90,000. Originally a joint venture with German publishing firm Gruner + Jahr, FT
eventually sold its 50% stake to its German partner in January 2008. FT
Deutschland never made a profit and is said to have accumulated losses of €250m
over 12 years. The German business daily closed on 7 December
2012.
The Financial Times launched a new
weekly supplement for the fund management industry on February 4 2002. FT fund
management (FTfm) was and still is distributed with the FT newspaper every
Monday. FTfm is the world's largest circulation fund management
title.
Since 2005, the FT has sponsored
the annual Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year
Award.
On 23 April 2007, the FT unveiled
"refreshed" version of the newspaper and introduced new slogan "We Live in
Financial Times".
In 2007 FT also pioneered metered
paywall, which lets visitors to its site read limited number of free articles a
month before asking them to pay. For year later FT launched innovative HTML5
mobile web app. Smart phones and tablets now drives 12% of subscriptions and 19%
of traffic to FT.com. In 2012 the number of digital subscribers passed the
circulation of the newspaper for the first time and FT drawn almost half of its
revenue from subscription, not advertising. “It’s a big shift”, said FT's
Gillian Tett.
Since 2010 FT is available on
Bloomberg Terminal. Financial Times said: “This agreement opens up another large
and hugely significant channel to the FT.”"