Japan's Nikkei has agreed to buy the FT Group, publisher of the Financial Times newspaper, from Britain's Pearson for 844 million pounds in cash, the two companies said.

The deal did not include the FT Group's 50 percent stake in The Economist magazine. Pearson said the FT Group contributed 334 million pounds of sales and 24 million pounds of adjusted operating income in 2014.

Nikkei describes itself as the largest independent business media group in Asia.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.