Financial Times

Lore & Background

The paper was founded in January 1888 as the London Financial Guide and rebranded a month later as the Financial Times. It was first circulated around metropolitan London by James Sheridan, who, along with his brother and Horatio Bottomley, sought to report on city business opposite the Financial News. The succeeding half-century of competition between the two papers eventually culminated in a 1945 merger, led by Brendan Bracken, which established it as one of the largest business newspapers in the world. Globalisation from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries facilitated editorial expansion for the FT, with the paper adding opinion columns, special reports, political cartoons, readers' letters, book reviews, technology articles and global politics features.

The paper is often characterised by its light-orange (salmon) newsprint. It is supplemented by its lifestyle magazine (FT Magazine), weekend edition (FT Weekend) and some industry publications. The editorial stance of the Financial Times centres on economic liberalism, particularly advocacy of free trade and free markets. Since its founding, it has supported liberal democracy, favouring classically liberal politics and policies from international governments; its newsroom is independent from its editorial board, and it is considered a newspaper of record.

Due to its history of economic commentary, the FT publishes a variety of financial indices, primarily the FTSE All-Share Index. Since the late 20th century, the paper's typical depth of coverage has linked it with a white-collar, educated, and financially literate readership. Because of this tendency, the FT has traditionally been regarded as a centrist to centre-right liberal, neo-liberal, and conservative-liberal newspaper. The Financial Times is headquartered in Bracken House at 1 Friday Street, near the city's financial centre, where it maintains its publishing house, corporate centre, and main editorial office.

Reader's Guide

The FT was launched as the London Financial Guide on 10 January 1888, renaming itself the Financial Times on 13 February the same year. Describing itself as the friend of 'The Honest Financier, the Bona Fide Investor, the Respectable Broker, the Genuine Director, and the Legitimate Speculator', it was a four-page journal. The readership was the financial community of the City of London, its only rival being the more daring and slightly older (founded in 1884) Financial News.

On 2 January 1893, the FT began printing on light pink paper to distinguish it from the similarly named Financial News. The pink tint came from the colour of the China clay they began sourcing from the Bodelva clay pit near St Austell, Cornwall, and at the time, it was cheaper not to bleach the paper (several other more general newspapers, such as The Sporting Times, had the same policy), but nowadays it is more expensive since the paper has to be dyed specially. The Berry brothers, Lord Camrose and Gomer Berry (later Lord Kemsley), purchased the Financial Times in 1919.

Purchase by Brendan Bracken; merger with the Financial News

In 1945, Brendan Bracken purchased the Financial Times from Lord Camrose, and, following 57 years of rivalry, merged it with the Financial News to form a single six-page newspaper. The Financial Times had a higher circulation, while the Financial News provided much of the editorial talent. The 'Lex' column was also introduced from Financial News. With this purchase and merger, Bracken is credited as being 'the effective founding father of the modern Financial Times, Britain's highest quality daily newspaper.' Gordon Newton, a Cambridge graduate, took over as editor in 1949, and immediately introduced a policy (then most unusual in Fleet Street) of direct recruitment of new university graduates, mainly from Oxbridge, as its trainee journalists.

Gordon Newton and "direct recruitment"

Many of them proceeded to have distinguished careers elsewhere in journalism and British public life and became the mainstay of the paper's own editorial strengths until the 1990s. The first such 'direct recruit' was future leading British economist Andrew Shonfield; the second was (later Sir) William Rees-Mogg, who went on, via The Sunday Times, to edit The Times in 1967 following its acquisition by Roy Thomson. Other FT Oxbridge recruits included the future Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson.