FT deal a boost for Nikkei's media profile

Pearson PLC, the London-based multinational publishing and education company, announced on July 23 that it was selling the Financial Times Group to Japanese media company Nikkei for about $1.3 billion. It is the biggest overseas purchase by a Japanese media company, giving Nikkei the largest global readership of financial news.

As Asia's largest independent business media group, Nikkei has scored a decisive point in its competition with its domestic rivals Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun and Sankei Shimbun. But this is not the first time that a Japanese company has acquired (or merged with) a major Western counterpart. Sony Corp purchased Hollywood's Columbia Pictures for about $4.8 billion in 1989, cementing its role as a global entertainment conglomerate.

Transnational mergers of media outlets are not new either. For instance, US media giant AOL Time Warner Inc. came into being after the merger of America Online and Time Warner in 2001, and Thomson Reuters is the result of the marriage between Canada's Thomson Corporation and the UK-based Reuters Group in 2008.