What price is the FT's independence?

One of the remarks I cherish from my young career as a reporter came from a hard-bitten Fleet Street veteran on the eve of my departure from Britain's Daily Telegraph group to join the foreign desk of the Financial Times. "This is your funeral as a journalist," he proclaimed. "The Financial Times is not a newspaper; it is a trade magazine for the City."

How wrong: the Financial Times today is one of the top five daily newspapers in the world. It offers an unparalleled combination of superb business coverage, the world's best international news, a gaggle of gaggling columnists from the profound to the quirky, inspired writing on the arts, culture and literature and a reasonable smattering of the most important sporting news.

Yet is the FT so good that tomorrow it could face its funeral as an independent newspaper? Financial circles of the City of London and Wall Street are asking: when and who will make a bid for the FT, and how much will they be prepared to pay?

It will be a sad day for the FT and for quality journalism if the paper is sold, a victory for the financiers who are quick to put a price on everything but who know the value of nothing.

That price will be high: most analysts start at US$1.2 billion. Jeffrey Goldfarb of Reuters Breakingviews calculates that on a similar basis to the parent companies of the New York Times and the Washington Post - valued at 60 per cent of last year's sales - plus a 30 per cent takeover premium, the FT would be worth £350 million (HK$4.35 billion).

But he speculated that the paper would have "trophy value" similar to a successful sports club, like Manchester United, typically valued at four times its revenues. On that basis, the FT could be worth £1.7 billion.

Speculation about the FT's sale also includes names of potential buyers. Thomson Reuters, whose history through Julius Reuter goes back to the days of the pigeon post, is cited in the same sentence as the brash newcomer Bloomberg as the leading candidates.