Will it still be business as usual for the Pink'Un?

The two big-name writers I admire the most are Lucy Kellaway, an associate editor and its management columnist, and John Kay, who has been writing a column on economics and business for the paper since 1995 and currently a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

Takashi Ito, a well-known Japanese correspondent, commented of the acquisition on the Nikkei website itself.

"I cannot say that I have ever been impressed by its journalism," said Ito, bluntly. "Nikkei reading was just for knowing what information Japanese markets were being fed by this newspaper that day."

Many in the media were also aghast in equal measures at the price paid for the title - the most expensive deal in history of the newspaper industry - and in the boldness of Nikkei's move in pursuing what is now very obviously its own international ambitions.

The Nikkei newspaper dominates business coverage in Japan, with 3.16 million paid subscribers, of which 430,000 are online. The company also runs the barometer for Japanese stocks, the Nikkei 225 index, the equivalent of the United States' Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The FT Group, and its stablemate The Economist magazine, in which Pearson had a 50 percent stake, had combined sales revenue of 334 million pounds ($524 million) delivering operating income of 24 million pounds in 2014, meaning the FT's eventual sale price was certainly considered high.

The FT had about 504,000 paid subscribers to its website by February, accounting for 70 percent of its total subscription base, so clearly the FT's digital strength is another massive appeal at this time of struggling print sales.

Nikkei had been looking for a global media target for a while.

It bought a minority stake in the UK-based global affairs and lifestyle magazine Monocle in 2014 and has partnerships with global media conglomerates, such as France's Le Monde and the US' Forbes. Until its purchase of the FT, however, few had even noticed the moves, which had had little impact on the industry.

Its FT acquisition is scheduled to be complete by the end of this year.

But like Peston and his fellow media traditionalists, who consider its sale a huge loss to the United Kingdom newspaper industry and its editorial independence, I'll finish with that old journalistic favorite regards what we can expect: Only time will tell.

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