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The London Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange-listed Pearson
owns the FT Group. Editor and CEO of BS, TN Ninan confirmed the
move to indiantelevision.com stating, "The initial agreement has
been just signed."
Though Ninan did not specify the amount of investment that would
be made in BSL by the foreign partner, he did admit that the investment
would be made "directly by FT or an affiliate".
"Subsequent agreements and other details are still to be worked
out," Ninan added.
BS is the second newspaper to have said that it has finalized foreign
investment after the investment norms were liberalised last year
by the government. Recently, Hindustan Times had announced that
it was tying up with Hendersen Global for bringing in 20 per cent
of foreign investment in a new company called HT Media. It envisages
activity in radio, dissemination of news and information, television,
Internet, video films, magazines and books, besides newspapers soon.
The others who have evinced interest in either setting up shop
in India or tying up with an India media company, include US business
magazine BusinessWeek, Par Golf from Exposure Media and Intelligent
Computing Chip from TBW Publishing. All of them are interested in
starting an Indian edition through licence agreements with the parent
companies.
It is not known whether a tie-up with FT would be extended to renewed
TV forays or in other specialty magazine segment by BS. But it is
expected that after having tied up with Ananda Bazaar Patrika group
for Star News venture, Star/News Corp may make an entry into print
medium too.
Pearson is an international media company with market-leading businesses
in education, business information and consumer publishing. The
FT Group is the most international source of business and political
news and analysis.
Pearson is listed on the London (PSON) and New York (PSO) Stock
Exchanges. In 2002 the company had sales of $6,955 million and operating
profits of $794 million.
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