The Financial Times has covered countless takeovers since its creation in 1888, and detailed waves of consolidation, asset-swapping and covetous moguls in its own industry.
Yet, despite perennial speculation, it has not changed hands since 1957, when S. Pearson Industries, a British construction company that had accrued interests from provincial newspapers to the Lazard merchant banking house, bought a controlling stake as “a sound, conservative investment”.
The FT, then a salmon-tinted London paper under the banner of “industry, commerce, public affairs”, gave that news just two paragraphs, stating authoritatively that its “management and policy will continue exactly as at present”.