The Huffington Post, an American news website, which was recently valued by some of its own executives at $1 billion, has also been aggressively expanding around the world — as has BuzzFeed, another American digital media company.

The media, Mr. Fallon said, has reached an inflection point as global audiences crave more information on their cellphones and via social media. Pearson describes itself as the world’s largest education company, and its leadership, Mr. Fallon said, felt that “what The F.T. really needed was to be a part of an organization that in everything it does is completely and absolutely focused on journalism.”

When asked if that meant Pearson would also be selling its stake in The Economist and its 47 percent stake in the publisher Penguin Random House, Mr. Fallon said that Pearson is not as closely involved in the management of those companies as it was with The Financial Times. He declined to comment further.

Bloomberg has long been rumored to covet The Economist. The company recently hired John Micklethwait, the former Economist editor, as editor in chief, and the magazine has long been a favorite of Bloomberg’s founder, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York.

The sale would allow Pearson to intensify its focus on the educational publishing business, which provided about three-quarters of its profit last year.

Nikkei, which is privately held, is perhaps best known outside of Japan for publishing the Nikkei 225 stock average. But it is also the proprietor of Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the country’s largest business newspaper, with a print circulation of around three million and a paid online readership of more than 400,000, according to its website.

The company has long had an editorial partnership with The Financial Times, and its business extends beyond publishing, to broadcasting, events and data services. The Nikkei group earned 10 billion yen ($80.7 million) in net profit last year, a decrease of 10 percent from 2013, on revenue of ¥300 billion.