About twenty years ago, I went to a farewell din­ner for a young man who was leav­ing the UK to head for Korea. As a news action junkie, I was baffled. The Soviet Empire was in crisis. The Middle East in tur­moil. And this guy was going to Seoul for the Fin­an­cial Times?

Still, gnaw­ing away was the sus­pi­cion that maybe he knew some­thing the rest of us didn’t. That linger­ing sus­pi­cion from twenty years ago was prob­ably right.

John Rid­ding is now the FT’s CEO and here’s his take on what ‘mar­ket melt­down’ has done for the paper brand (as told to Robert Mac­Mil­lan at Reu­ters):

“What [the crisis] is doing for our read­er­ship and audi­ence is pretty remark­able. I think it really under­lines this idea that at a time of tur­moil, people really do need trus­ted guides, and are pre­pared to pay.”

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