Axel Springer too disciplined to beat Nikkei’s Financial Times bid

AXEL Springer would have “loved” to buy the Financial Times (FT), but the $1.3bn Nikkei paid for the salmon-hued paper was too much for the German media group, according to CEO Mathias Doepfner.

“It would have fit very well, but at the end it was too expensive and therefore we decided to be disciplined and not to do it,” Mr Doepfner said yesterday.

Japan’s biggest financial news publisher surprised the media world last month by buying Pearson’s Financial Times at a premium to recent newspaper deals. Nikkei and its competition came so close to the wire the Financial Times’s own homepage was still reporting the German group as the leading bidder after Nikkei had announced its deal.

Mr Doepfner said Axel Springer would continue to push digitalisation on its own with small and mid-sized acquisitions. A deal with ProSiebenSat.1 Media is off the table, after ProSieben said last week it was not “planning or contemplating a merger” with Springer. While helping the companies to combine their push into digital media, a merger would have faced complications over who controls the entity, as well as antitrust scrutiny.

Axel Springer’s second-quarter revenue had risen 7% to €796.7m and digital media made up 62% of the total, compared with 54% a year earlier, the company said yesterday.

Sales at the company’s classified unit advanced 55% to €179.2m.

DZ Bank analyst Harald Heider said he expected further strong growth in that business and reiterated his buy rating on Axel Springer’s stock.

The shares rose 6.4% to €55 at noon in Frankfurt yesterday.

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation declined 0.6% to €147m.