The Kilimanjaro we must climb

PEARSON chief executive Marjorie Scardino has admitted she has a 'Mount Kilimanjaro' to climb to keep her promise to double the company's value.

When she took charge of the media group in 1997, Scardino said she could achieve the target within five years.

But, despite reporting better than expected results last week, the group's share price of 852 1/2p is still well short of the 1185p target. And it is a long way off the £2300p that Pearson, publisher of the Financial Times, hit at the height of the dotcom boom two years ago.

Scardino said: 'It's been a rollercoaster ride, with the price going up and down. I always tell staff that doubling the value of the business is a good thing to focus on, though it's looking like Mount Kilimanjaro right now.'

Scardino decided to concentrate on three areas: newspapers, education and publishing. She sold other non-core businesses, including the Tussaud's waxworks and the company's stake in Lazard investment bank. According to Scardino, Pearson is now about 'education in its broadest sense, including supplying news to FT readers'.

Though newspapers are the smallest source of earnings for the group, the division is home to Pearson's best-known brand, the FT. Scardino denied that it no longer fits in the reshaped business and could be sold. 'Over my dead body it will,' she insisted.

As in the previous year, losses at FT.com, the online version of the newspaper, wiped out operating profits at the FT itself. FT.com lost £60m, compared with £113m in 2000, while the FT's profits were £31m, compared with £81m, mainly because of a 20% drop in advertising revenue.

However, FT.com, which includes online operations for other papers, will start charging subscribers up to £100 a year for some information, such as the influential Lex comment column, and it intends to break even at the end of the year.

Scardino said: 'If I had my time over again, would I do things differently with our internet operations? Sure. We spent a lot of money on marketing that maybe we needn't have. We invested in some things we shouldn't have. But across the business we have about £1bn of sales related to online operations. FT.com's revenues are about the same as the Wall Street Journal's with wsj.com.'

But Dow Jones, owner of wsj.com, said that if it included revenue from licensing its content to other providers, as FT.com does, it would be up to seven times bigger.

Though plans for FT Asia are on hold - following the departure of Robert Thomson, managing editor of the FT's US edition, to be the new editor of The Times - Scardino plans to lock horns with Dow Jones in the Far East. 'We will look at an Asia edition,' she said. 'We have watched the Wall Street Journal try for 25 years to do something out there.'