The Observer view on Nikkei’s purchase of the Financial Times

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/26/observer-view-nikkei-purchase-financial-times

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What does the Financial Times have in common with Newcastle Brown Ale, Branston Pickle and Manchester United? Answer: they are all famed British brands, sold without reference to customers, fans and employees, to foreign companies for a great deal of money.

Lionel Barber, the FT’s editor, told a worried newsroom that last week’s surprise purchase of the newspaper by Japanese media group Nikkei for a handsome £844m “was not a shotgun marriage”. Maybe he meant “shogun” and his words were lost in translation. Hopefully the Tokyo overlords who now control the Pink ’Un will get the joke. But Barber et al had better watch their Ps and Qs from now on. Or maybe not. Fervent, no-cost assurances that the FT’s editorial independence, protected during Pearson’s rule, is safe under new management have flown fast and furious. Nikkei’s chief executive, Tsuneo Kita, claimed the two organisations have much in common. “We share the same journalistic values,” he said.

Up to a point, Lord Copper. Fleet Street is a rough, disrespectful school whose awkward-squad culture contrasts sharply with the more cautious, deferential relationship between power and press prevalent in Tokyo. Many Japanese, for example, would have liked a more rigorous, public questioning of bosses and ministers in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

Why is it that Toshiba’s gross overstatement of earnings over several years has only now come to light? It was the FT, not Nikkei, which exposed a similar scandal at Olympus. On the whole, Japanese politicians and business chiefs expect, and receive, a degree of polite media compliance that is wholly alien to British journalism. In Tokyo press interviews, for example, it is routine to be told to submit questions in advance.

Will these careful ways rub off on the FT, a newspaper of fierce intellectual integrity and an often unexpectedly liberal editorial line? Time will tell. Meanwhile, Britain is left to contemplate the loss of yet another flagship business. The FT joins Jaguar Land Rover (India), Asda (US), Aga (US), Boots (Italy), Manchester United (US), Rolls-Royce (Germany), Weetabix (China), Cadbury (US), Camelot (Canada), Raleigh (Netherlands), Branston Pickle (Japan) and Newcastle Brown Ale (Netherlands and Denmark) in foreign ownership. Airports, energy firms and many London hotels and shops have gone the same way.

According to the Office for National Statistics, only 1% of British companies are foreign-owned, although they contribute 29% of total UK gross value added. But foreign ownership rises to 41% if calculated on the basis of shares. In Britain’s giant free market auction house, are the best and the brightest on the block? No FT, no comment.

FINANCIAL TIMES