Nikkei'S Acquisition Of FT Will Drive The Rapid Development Of Japanese Media.

Yes

The potential value of acquiring FT is enormous.

Although the FT pays only 1/5 of the Nikkei news, FT pays more than 2/3 of its customers outside the UK.

Compared with Nikkei news, it is clear that FT's globalization strategy is more successful.

The consideration behind Nikkei's takeover of FT

"Nikkei news 160 billion yen 100% acquisition of the financial times!" this acquisition is the largest overseas acquisition of Japanese media ever since, and has made the Nikkei news agency become the world's largest financial media.

After the combination of Japan economic news and FT, the number of users who pay for the electronic version will reach 930 thousand (of which the number of users of Japan economic news is 391 thousand), surpassing the New York Times (about 910 thousand people). The circulation of newspapers (the Japanese economic news's own morning news volume is 2 million 730 thousand copies) will be two times more than the Wall Street Journal (about 1 million 460 thousand copies).

To this, Fujiwara Seiichi of the Nomura Securities exclaimed, "this is really a shocking news before we go to bed in the middle of the night."

Kataoka Takashi, a MITSUBISHI UFJ investigation consultant, said, "this is a startling start."

Watanabe Takashi, the UZABASE director of the famous Internet new media in Japan, was surprised and asked, "is it true?"

Shocked and unexpected, this reaction is not surprising. This is also the reaction of many Japanese people when they heard the news. In fact, about 3 hours before the news release, Watanabe Takashi's boss, President of UZABASE, Umeda Yusuke also forwarded a related report and added a comment: "it is said that the powerful alternate buyers are Peng Bo, Germany Axel Springer, Thomson Reuters, and who will eventually spend it?"

Just 3 hours before the news was released, Huangda Kazuhiro, a Japanese news reporter in London, sent a news flash on the Nikkei news website. "The British education publishing giant Pearson group is making negotiations on the sale of its financial times to the buyer. The buyer is not in a clear position. According to Reuters, it is a" global ".

The company is expected to sell around 1 billion pounds (about 193 billion yen).

In addition to Nikkei news, smoke bombs appeared in FT, and it was still vaguely revealed that it would be acquired by German Axel Springer just 30 minutes before the announcement.

Apart from the "accident" and "shock", there are individual voices who are puzzled about the amount of money acquired in this acquisition. For example, Sai ho of MITSUBISHI Bank of Tokyo believes that "even if there are various factors weighing the consideration, a Japanese yen worth less than 5 billion yen (Note: the Financial Times last year has a profit of about 4 billion 500 million yen)", will it cost 160 billion yen to buy it? "UFJ"

However, the domestic public opinion in Japan is generally consistent with the expectation of this acquisition.

CEO, Matsumoto, a Japanese securities giant Monex, commented after the news that "it's a real feat! FT may have declined, but even so, it's worth buying 160 billion yen."

"An interesting acquisition! I hope the Nikkei news can be well managed to further enhance the brand value of FT," said M&A, an authoritative figure in Japan's field and a visiting professor at Kyoto University's School of management and management.

Globis, a founder of Japanese business school and a well-known entrepreneur, also said, "big news! This is a very interesting event.

Accordingly, Nikkei FT group will play a leading role in the global financial and media industry. Its competitors will be Murdoch WSJ union or Murdoch Bloomberg Association.

In Japan, when it comes to "Japan economic news", the first impression is the first economic newspaper of Japanese society, which has a history of 140 years, and has a long history of 12 years.

In Japan, known as the "newspaper kingdom", the traditional paper media is a truly "newspaper group".

For example, Nikkei news group has more than 50% subsidiaries and more than 50 affiliated companies holding more than 20% shares, including Tokyo TV, Osaka TV and Hokkaido TV. Besides, its high yield makes its newspaper group far behind. Its regular profit is almost 7-8 times that of the Asahi Shimbun, which is ranked first in the sales volume. It is 7-8 times the "Sankei Shimbun" and "Daily News".

Compared with the collectivization of Japanese paper media, FT is obviously "big brand and small volume".

FT's global paid users (both electronic and print version) and sales are only about 1/5 of Japan's economic news.

Nonetheless, Nikkei spent 160 billion yen to buy FT, which required great courage, because according to the financial data released by Nikkei in March, by the end of 2014 12, the group held less than 140 billion yen in cash and securities (liquid assets).

So what is the main consideration of Nikkei's acquisition of FT? For the Nikkei news, it can be said that the potential value of acquiring FT is enormous.

First of all, although the Japanese newspaper group has a large volume and the newspaper circulation is astonishing, such performance is largely caused by Japan's extremely special media environment, plus the main reason is the letter from Japan. From a global perspective, the Japanese paper media is "big but not strong". Its reputation, credibility and influence are far behind that of the British and American newspapers.

Although the amount of FT paid is only 1/5 of Nikkei's news, compared with almost 100% of Nikkei's paid users, FT pays more than 2/3 of its subscribers outside the UK.

Compared with Nikkei news, obviously FT.

More successful, the global economic information dissemination power, speech influence is much larger.

In addition, the English circle is a huge market position.

The acquisition of FT will greatly boost Nikkei's global business expansion and its influence.

Secondly, the positive change of FT in the Internet era, and the experience and techniques of "digitalization first and multi-channel management" are just what the Nikkei news needs to learn and absorb.

Although the Nikkei news is longer than FT's history for 12 years, it is far behind the profit model and digital exploration of the electronic version.

Although in Japan's several major media, Nikkei news is right.

The most active one, but confined to Japan's extremely special and collective media environment, has to be lagged behind from a global perspective.

The Nikkei news was only launched in 2010, the "Nikkei electronic version". FT launched the electronic version as early as 1995, opening the way of digital exploration.

The number of paid users of FT is only 1/5 of Nikkei's news, but about 60% of FT users are purchased by electronic version, while the Nikkei electronic version only accounts for about 10% of the total users.

If FT, a pioneer of digital exploration, is brought to the flag, if it can be applied well, it will undoubtedly be helpful for Nikkei to take the lead in digital exploration in Japan.

As the professor of Business School of Waseda University, Kun Lai long said, "this is the acquisition of the future fate of the Nikkei, but it is also the only opportunity for the Nikkei to grow into a world-class media.

For the Nikkei, such a large purchase is certainly accompanied by risks, but it can be expected in the future.

FT has successfully promoted the profit model of the electronic version charging, which is the ideal mode that the Nikkei news expects. This provides a good reference for the Nikkei news to advance the electronic version in the future.

The acquisition of FT has come to a close. Will Nikkei news be "pforming FT" or "being pformed by FT" in the future? The combination of the two will produce physical reactions or chemical reactions.

If the Nikkei news can accelerate the reform of digitalization and globalization, it will undoubtedly drive the change of the whole Japanese media's ecological environment.