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Japan: Nikkei’s $1.3 billion FT bid ‘too much,’ Axel Springer CEO says

By  |  August 5, 2015

Axel Springer SE would have “loved” to buy the Financial Times, but the $1.3 billion Nikkei Inc. paid for the salmon-hued paper was too much for the German media group, according to Chief Executive Officer Mathias Doepfner.

“It would have fit very well, but at the end it was too expensive and therefore we decided to be disciplined and not to do it,” Doepfner said on a conference call with analysts on Tuesday.

Japan’s biggest financial news publisher last month surprised the media world by buying Pearson PLC’s FT at a premium to recent newspaper deals. Nikkei and Springer’s competition came so close to the wire that the FT’s own home page was still reporting the German group as the leading bidder after Nikkei had announced its deal.

Full content: Bloomberg

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