Sun sets for a British warrior

FOR a newspaper that prides itself on the superiority and accuracy of its reporting the FT online headline at 2.13pm on July 23, 2015, will be regarded as something of a classic.

‘Pearson in talks with Axel Springer over sale of FT Group,’ screamed the three-bylined article. Less than an hour later Nikkei appeared as the groom for the pink lady. Employees, however, must feel well prepared for the change of ownership. ‘Don’t panic’ advised the brick- coloured teaser on the top of page one in yesterday’s edition: ‘How to reassure your staff at a time of disruption.’

It was clear when John Fallon succeeded Dame Marjorie Scardino as chief executive in 2012 that the decade-long promise that the FT would be sold over her ‘dead body’ no longer applied. Fallon had all sorts of reasons for arguing the FT was core to Pearson, such as opening doors for education in China. But they were all a little threadbare.

Nevertheless, in commercial terms he can be congratulated for achieving a price of £884m for a newspaper and online media group which scraped together £24m of profits last year. That is something for Pearson shareholders to savour.

When the Pearson-Cowdray family still held sway in the company that bears its name it was a wonderfully benign owner of great British brands ranging from Royal Doulton, to Madame Tussauds and the British arm of the distinguished Lazard merchant bank.

The FT – well resourced, strong in its fearless reporting and financial investigations and provocative commentary – was the flagship.

Its new proprietor Nikkei, it is claimed by the Pearson and FT management, is just the right owner for the FT as the Pearson group reaches an ‘inflexion point’ and mobile and social media take-off.

But what about content and investment in journalism?

Do we really think that the editors and managers of Nikkei understand the values of i ndependence of thought that distinguish British financial journalism?

With due respect to Japanese colleagues collectively, they are barely visible at the kind of global events, such as Davos, in which the FT delights.

There was not one question from a Japanese reporter at last night’s online press conference on the Nikkei deal. And everyone seems to have forgotten that it was the Western media, rather than the reporting muscle of Tokyo titles, that unmasked the Olympus scandal.

We all wish the 500 FT journalists the very best as they enter a new era. The FT ceased to be the Square Mile’s local paper long ago and now sells fewer paper copies in London than the Big Issue.

It bestrides a global stage with confidence and panache.

One trusts that a great British product will not be stifled by the deeply unadventurous hand of Japanese publishers.

Betting on Hornby

THERE should be no mystery as to why Andy Hornby will not be able to sit on the public company board when the Ladbrokes Coral betting merger is done.

Hornby is set to be chief operating officer of the combined gambling chain. The former HBOS chief executive has lived a charmed life since he managed to offload a bankrupt Halifax Bank of Scotland to Lloyds in 2008, robbing shareholders of value and costing 50,000 employees at the joint bank their jobs.

The fact that he is still in work, seven years after the HBOS implosion, is a terrible indictment of the regulator the Financial Conduct Authority and a tribute to the trickiness of City lawyers.

A braver and more decisive enforcer would have published and been damned a long time ago rather than allow itself to be trapped by the intricacies of checking and re- checking criticisms of those found responsible.

In a harder-nosed system Hornby and his cohorts would have been barred from the City and commercial world long ago.

Lloyds lustre

VALUED at £194bn, evocatively named Wells Fargo is the world’s most valuable bank. It has achieved this by eschewing investment banking and derivatives and stuck to its guns doing plain vanilla utility banking and mortgages. It is now more valuable than its American rivals JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup, both up to their necks in casino banking.

So which British bank best duplicates the Wells Fargo model? It is almost certainly Lloyds Banking Group where the Government stake has been cut from 42pc to 16pc as it has sorted out the ghastly mess at HBOS. Lloyds’ 23pc of the mortgage market, together with its grip on current accounts and savings means that, if it could consign the remnants of PPI to the dustbin, it could become Europe’s strongest bank.

Lloyds shares could be an excellent wager on higher interest rates which could come by the end of the year. And as, briefly, in the 1990s, when the late, great Sir Brian Pitman was at the helm, it could once again challenge for the prize that currently rests with Wells Fargo.