FT Sues Blackstone For Sharing Premium Account Info With Multiple Employees
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
The last time we heard, financial services firm Legg Mason still owed $19.7 million to newsletter publisher financial Lowry's Reports for illegal distribution of the latter's newsletters. The Financial Times Group is now hoping for the same, this time suing a controversial biggie: Steve Schwarzman-owned Blackstone Group, alleging that the PE group's employees London office had passed around the online premium account info to their colleagues to avoid paying for multiple accounts, reports WSJ's Digits blog. Those London employee was accessing thousands of articles a day, going as far back as 2002, the suit alleges.
Blackstone did try to settle with FT, but Blackstone began settlement negotiations with the FT, and prior to any result, the Pearson-owned company decided to sue, the story says. The full lawsuit is posted here, and now word in it on how much damages FT is seeking from Blackstone.
By Rafat Ali