Pearson: No buying spree after FT sale

PEARSON will not embark on an acquisition spree after selling the Financial Times i n an £ 844m mega-deal.

The education giant this week agreed to sell the historic business newspaper and website to Japanese financial agency Nikkei.

But yesterday Pearson’s boss John Fallon said the company, which is offloading the title so that it can concentrate on growing its core operations, would resist splurging the money on takeovers.

‘We have most of the capabilities and assets that we need already,’ he said, though he added: ‘We are constantly scanning the environment for potential acquisitions, and we will continue to do that.’

The company, 15p down at 1219p, reported a half year loss of £115m, compared to a loss of £36m in the same period a year earlier. Sales rose 5pc to £2.1bn.

It regularly finishes the first half of the year in the red because the majority of its income comes from schools and universities renewing subscriptions and placing orders at the end of the summer before the start of the academic year.

Fallon said this year’s loss was steeper because of an accounting quirk relating to a software business that it sold last year. He said that the company would be ‘completely focused’ed on its education businesses,businesse which include exam boards and textbook publishers around the world.

The comments raise questions over the future of its stakes in the Economist magazine and the publishing venture Penguin Random House.

Pearson owns 50pc of the Economist, which it acquired as part of a deal to buy the FT in 1957. If it decided to sell the stake, the move would have to be cleared by a board of trustees who represent the other shareholders in the publication, which include current and former employees.

Its 47pc holding in Penguin Random House could be sold to majority shareholder Bertelsmann in October.