For the second time in less than eight years the publisher of Ignites has a new corporate parent. Thursday Nikkei Inc won the bidding war for Pearson's Financial Times Group after an "eleventh hour" bid in which it agreed to pay £844 million (that works out to $1.31 billion at current exchange rates).

The sale includes New York City-based Money-Media, the publisher of Ignites and FundFire. Money-Media is part of the Financial Publishing Group that is made up of The Banker, Investors Chronicle, MandateWire, and more along with Money-Media. The Financial Times Group also covers : FT newspaper, FT.com, How to Spend It, FT Labs, FTChinese, Medley Global Advisors, and the Confidentials.

There had been some speculation within the publishing industry that the FT Financial Publishing Group could be sold separately from the FT Newspaper, but that did not happen. Pearson did sell MergerMarkets -- another business-to-business unit -- to BC Partners for £382 million in November 2013. That amount ended up being nearly half of what Pearson obtained for the remainder of the FT Group.

What the sale to the Japanese-based Nikkei means to Money-Media is not known.

Dan Fink, managing director of Money-Media, was not immediately available for comment on the sale. Nor were spokespeople for Pearson PLC.

Tokyo-based Nikkei beat out Germany's Axel Springer on the deal, reported the FT itself.

Money-Media last changed hands at the start of 2008 when its founder Mike Griffin sold it to Pearson PLC for what Pearson later disclosed to be $63 million. At that time Money-Media had $16.8 million in revenue.

How much those earnings have grown (or diminished) has not been disclosed by Pearson since 2008. 

Correction: A prior version of this story mislabeled a revenue figure as something else, gave the wrong title for Dan Fink (he's managing director of Money-Media), and gave the wrong timeframe since the last sale of Money-Media.

Edited by: Sean Hanna, Editor in Chief


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