Covid-19 and the Financial Times

This note to our commercial partners explains the steps we are taking in response to the outbreak of the new coronavirus, Covid-19. These measures are intended to ensure our staff are safe, our working practices support efforts to suppress the outbreak, and our journalism, together with the marketing services we offer to businesses, remain resilient throughout the period of disruption.

Our top priority is to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all employees across the FT Group. As such we have now moved globally to remote working. Our technology infrastructure was designed to support this approach and over the last few weeks we have been testing home-working at scale in preparation.

As a commercial partner, your FT representative remains contactable through the usual channels. We understand that the crisis surrounding the outbreak of Covid-19 will impact communications plans for some of our clients. Our team is here to discuss your requirements and provide advice as required. As a business we will continue to offer trusted platforms for brands to engage with the world’s business community throughout this period of uncertainty.

At times like these our journalistic mission is more important than ever; the record levels of traffic and subscriptions over recent days are evidence of this. The FT’s editorial team has robust processes in place to ensure our news operation continues bringing our readers the stories that matter, including the Covid-19 outbreak and its impact on global business, politics and society. To ensure that this journalism still reaches those who rely on it, we have long-established global contingency plans in place with our printers and distributors as well as communication plans to direct print readers to digital alternatives, should that be necessary.

This is a rapidly changing situation and we continue to follow official government advice across all the regions we operate in. Global and local response teams, including the FT management board are meeting daily to review our approach and we will be back in touch should there be a substantive change.