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Dame Marjorie has gone on record saying she would sell the newspaper “over my dead body” But her resolve could be weakening.. “The future of Pearson clearly lies in its education business,” Mr Lovelace explains. “Pearson’s publishing arm is no longer what people are so interested in, and there are few synergies between the two businesses.”So could Pearson jettison the FT? The question has been asked before There is always interest. Penguin, for example, is one of the most profitable consumer book publishers in the world. However, profits at the group’s biggest division, Pearson Education, are expected to be down by around 4 per cent. Pearson Education provides textbooks and runs examination programmes for schools and universities, mostly in the US, and has fallen victim to state budget cuts. But still, it is the FT that finds itself bottom of the class, the laggard holding back Pearson.

“But it’s a question of whether it can achieve economies of scale: a large newspaper group, like Dow Jones [owner of The Wall Street Journal], might be better placed to make savings in production and editorial, while the FT is more vulnerable, as there are few savings it can make within the Pearson group.”Other parts of Pearson are performing better. There is always scope for more cuts, but Mr Lovelace suggests it would be disadvantaged for the FT because, unlike most of its competitors, it is not part of a wider newspaper group that can share content and distribution “The FT remains a tremendous brand, and asset,” he says. Despite this, FT is now an established brand, and a valuable asset.Like most newspapers, the FT has been cutting costs, £100m since 2000. The site now has 70,000 subscribers, paying between £75 and £200 a year, which is no mean feat But the strategy has been confused.

Pearson originally planned to pay for the site entirely through advertising; it introduced a mixed free access/subscription service when it realised this was not feasible. By the end of 2002, the website had broken even on an operating level (which did not include the start-up costs, estimated at £150m). The lavish spending at the peak of the dot-com bubble in 2000 was epitomised when Pearson took out an advertisement during the Oscar awards ceremony, hoping the website would help the FT break into the US market. “If they report a £25m loss on Monday, I’ll clap my hands.”It will be hard to tell how well the FT’s website, FT , performed last year, because its operations were folded into the main group for the first time. “We don’t expect Financial Times newspaper revenues to return to 2000 peak levels any time soon, but I certainly expect they will start to pick up during 2004.” She regards some analysts’ forecasts of a £25m loss for the newspaper as optimistic. “When the stock market bubble burst, and following 11 September, big display adverts notifying shareholders of flotations and acquisitions dried up – and with them much of the FT’s revenues. Even though the economy is now picking up, advertisers are hugely price aware, and have found alternative ways of getting their messages across, using direct marketing more.”Meg Geldens of stockbroker Investec says that even with the economy picking up she does not see a recovery just around the corner.