Pearson expects him to build the sale of FT editions in America, Asia and Europe It explains the redundancies, too. They are much less formal and much less tied to big organisations The FT has to find a new market. I'm not quite sure they know what that market is."Pearson executives insist they do know. Now it might as well be 'No FT, No problem'.""The FT's readership is changing faster than the newspaper," says Murray Chick, the chief executive of Brand Aid.

"Traditional use of the paper has been overtaken by electronic media and, at the same time, the new business elite is different from the one that existed in 1986 or 1996 They work in smaller firms. His handling of the delicate subject matter ensures that the film will be a massive box office success.Starring Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena, the film tells the true story of two Port Authority officers trapped under the World Trade Center rubble in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks. But it also presents him with a problem.In spite of the provocative nature of many of his movies - the labyrinthine conspiracy theories of JFK, the anti-war sentiments of his Vietnam trilogy and the apparent romanticisation of sociopathic criminals in Natural Born Killers, Stone has always claimed to be above, or perhaps, beneath politics. "The FT imagines that it is still the bible for City professionals," says one executive, "but it is hard to sustain that role when all the other titles have hired prophets of their own."Another says: "The advertising slogan used to be 'No FT, No comment'. We could have done a lot more digging."And while the FT failed to dig up these stories for a new readership, expanded business sections in quality newspapers - many run by former FT staffers - have eroded its existing market. They struggled to cover huge financial scandals such as Enron. Dame Marjorie admitted this in 2002, confessing that "the business press - and I include the FT in this - has not worked hard enough to ferret out these stories.

Now that is down to a third.In a rapidly changing financial world, journalists imbued with the FT's "square mile" mindset are accused of focusing on profits and accounts rather than breaking news. But she has a reputation for having a cool head in a crisis.Some media analysts doubt whether achieving big profits is possible. The FT's daily sales have declined from a peak of 500,000 in 2002 to 440,000 this year. It lost £32m in 2003 and £9m in 2004 before returning to the black in 2005 Circulation within Britain has plummeted. Ten years ago, the UK and Ireland edition accounted for two-thirds of the FT's total sales. Her big test will be to meet the demand of the chairman, Glen Moreno, that the newspaper return to "serious profitability".So far, the 44-year-old mother of three has kept a low profile. In May, its chief executive, Dame Marjorie Scardino, underlined the urgent need for change by appointing the group chief financial officer, Rona Fairhead, to run the Financial Times Group.