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German FT faces closure

November 21, 2012

Financial Times Deutschland could have a short future. The newspaper has never made money and booked a loss of 10 million euros last year.

https://p.dw.com/p/16n15
TheFinancial Times Deutschland (Photo: Marcus Brandt/dpa)
Image: picture-alliance/dpa

Publisher Gruner + Jahr is expected to decide the fate of the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) at a board meeting on Wednesday, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported, but few at the paper doubt what the decision would be. G+J spokespeople declined comment to news agencies.

Founded in 2000 as a joint venture with Pearson, the publisher of The Economist and the iconic salmon-papered Financial Times, FTD has a circulation of about 102,000. Pearson sold its 50 percent stake to its German partner in 2008.

German newspapers' accumulated losses since 2000 are estimated at 250 million euros ($320 million). Data has shown that advertising income for German newspapers dropped 6 percent to 4.1 billion euros in the first 10 months of 2012 from 2011.

Last week, the Frankfurter Rundschau filed for bankruptcy. The news agency DAPD, which mostly heavily relies on newspapers, took a similar step shortly before.

The Federation of German Newspaper Publishers announced that readers spent 22.8 million euros in the third quarter of 2012 on 333 different newspapers, most local or regional, making it Europe's biggest market and the world's fifth biggest.

mkg/ccp (Reuters, AFP, epd)