The Hindu : Financial Times to pick up stake in Business Standard

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 19, 2003

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Financial Times to pick up stake in Business Standard

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI SEPT. 18. The financial daily, Business Standard, could well become the first Indian newspaper to secure foreign investment following a decision of the internationally renowned broadsheet, Financial Times, to pick up 13.85 per cent equity in the "pink paper'' for Rs. 14.10 crores.

Announcing this here today, Business Standard Limited said an agreement to this effect had been reached in principle with Financial Times, and an application for approval of the investment under the FDI rules for print media would be submitted to the Government shortly after working out the finer details of the deal.

As per the agreement, The Financial Times will join Kotak Mahindra group and Great Eastern Shipping as the leading investors in Business Standard. According to a statement issued by Business Standard Limited, "the company will continue to operate as an independent entity with its management reporting to the board on which The Financial Times will have appropriate representation.''

Further, the statement places on record the fact that this will be the first major foreign investment in an Indian newspaper by a strategic investor, and turns a decade-long association — through editorial syndication of reports in Business Standard from Financial Times — into a "full-fledged partnership.''

Though Hendersen Global Investors has picked up 20 per cent stake in Hindustan Times Media Private Ltd. — the new company floated by The Hindustan Times Ltd purportedly to start a Mumbai edition — the tie-up between Business Standard and Financial Times is as of now the first between an Indian and a foreign newspaper after the Government relaxed the print media guidelines in June last year to allow 26 per cent FDI in Indian newspapers.

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