The Financial Times (FT) is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world.

Along with FT.com, it has an average daily readership of 2.1 million people worldwide (PwC audited figures, November 2011). FT.com has 4 million registered users and 250,000 digital subscribers, as well as 585,681 paying users. FT Chinese has more than 1.7 million registered users. The Financial Times in print format has an average daily circulation of three hundred and five thousand copies worldwide (the British edition has a daily circulation of eighty eight thousand and a combined Saturday and Sunday, weekend, circulation of one hundred and thirteen thousand copies), as of April 2012.

Founded in 1888 by James Sheridan and Horatio Bottomley, the Financial Times competed with four other finance-oriented newspapers, in 1945 absorbing the last, the Financial News (founded in 1884). The FT specialises in UK and international business and financial news, and is printed as a broadsheet on light salmon paper.

Vijay Mallya (Kannada: ವಿಜಯ್ ಮಲ್ಯ; born on December 18, 1955 in Calcutta, West Bengal, India) is an industrialist and a second-time member of India's parliament. He is the chairman of the UB Group – one of India's largest conglomerates,^{[citation needed]} with diverse interests in brewing, distilling, aviation, pharmaceuticals, real estate, engineering, fertilizers, biotechnology and information technology.

He is the son of industrialist Vittal Mallya. He took over as the chairman of the company at the age of 28 after his father's sudden demise in 1983.

Mallya attended the La Martiniere, Calcutta boys school, and graduated with a Bachelor in Commerce degree from St. Xavier's College, Kolkata. While in college, Mallya was interning in his family businesses. After he graduated, he interned at the American part of Hoechst in the United States.^{[not in citation given]}

At the time of his father's death, Mallya was unanimously elected Chairman of United Breweries. As part of his modernisation bid, he consolidated the various companies under one umbrella group called the "UB Group", spun off non-core and loss-making businesses and focused on the core business of beverage alcohol.Kingfisher beer controls more than 50 per cent market share of India's beer market. The beer is available in 52 countries outside India and leads the way among Indian beers in the international market.United Spirits Ltd, the flagship of the UB Group, has achieved the historic milestone of selling 114 million cases, becoming the largest spirits company in the world by volume.

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington) is an American business magnate, computer programmer and philanthropist. Gates is the former chief executive officer (CEO) and current chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company he co-founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third; in 2011 he was the wealthiest American and the second wealthiest person. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.