The Financial Times acquisition by the Japanese Nikkei would have been impossible just a few years ago. It has happened!

Nobody in England, in London, even tried to put up a counteroffer. That is a formidable change of mentality both in London and in the worldwide financial community.

What does it mean? Of course the pursuit of more money. But above all, the globalisation has really happened. And for the fist time, there is a huge global multinational financial and business information giant.

This will, no doubt, influence the way financial information is delivered worldwide.

Another huge event has surged during the last few days. The great and mighty NBC network in the US, which owns CNBC among others, is courting two or three start-ups of Silicon Valley. They are called Vox and BuzzFeed. Startups which, in turn, are looking to acquire, or marry with a company called VICE.  Here we are at the opposite of the global and mighty. The three digital companies are trying to attract a young audience which supposedly does not want to read established media. To be seen.

But NBC is putting money on the table. BuzzFeed is valued at 1.5 billion dollars. Vox at 850 million dollars. Staggering numbers.

Both deals the NBC one and the Nikkei-FT one have a problem; where does the money come from? In the Financial Times case there are subscribers and advertisers. But in the NBC story there are only advertisers. That is not a very good scheme for the future. New media, digital only, will have to fight difficult battles to keep advertisers interested. Undoubtedly they will have to court readers and subscribers. If they fail and rely on advertising only they will be fragile.

The future of media is full of pitfalls, therefore, I would simply add that media need both paying subscribers and advertising. A very complicated equation.