Speaking as someone who subscribed earlier this year, the Lex column does provide subtle stock tips, but my real interest in it is the fact that it’s aimed at people who have a financial interest in accurate news, so the reporting doesn’t veer off into pushing moralistic narratives like other UK news sources.

The FT is a paper read by people who don't work in finance assuming that people in finance read it. It hasn't been relevant in finance or even business for many years now. You can also tell this from the comments section which has, like the paper, turned into establishment/"centrist dad" central.

WSJ and Bloomberg took a lot of the top markets/companies people almost a decade ago now (Andrea Felstead was one, genuinely someone who knew UK retail very well). The majority of the remaining columnists either worked in politics or are politics-adjacent. There is almost no detailed finance market coverage. The UK companies stuff was spun out into the Shares magazine 20 years ago.

The FT reflects British society, nothing could be more grubby than becoming involved in commerce. Many of the people who moved up and out go into political journalism because that is high status (i.e. Peston). The FT also has a nasty habit of creating special jobs for people if they are high status enough (Kuper is one, Keynes is the new one, there are many more). The FT is a basically unreformed backwater that is a bit like it was 80s, nothing has really changed. I know a few people who work there in undemanding roles (every couple of weeks attending an expenses paid dinner with a celebrity) and got their job through nepotism. It isn't like anywhere else in UK business or even journalism because of the corporate subscription revenue, the editor is able to run it like a fief.

To give specific examples: Chris Giles is somewhat notorious for being a complete hack. If you are somewhat familiar with how news is made, you should be able to read his stories and work out exactly what conversations led to that story being written. In many cases it is Giles talking to someone adjacent to or in politics. Martin Wolf is a complete dinosaur, if he writes a column you can predict exactly what his take will be because he hasn't had a new idea since 1990. JBM is probably the only journalist who actually writes interesting things, these things however often seem to be conflicted with his personal interests/conversations with civil servants. Stuart Kirk...how does he have a column? Barely worked in markets, somehow the markets guy. Shrimsley, politics guy. Cavendish, worked for Cameron. Beattie, basically a Martin Wolf-lite. Pilita Clark, Lidl Kellaway. It goes on and on. Ineffectual posh people with the most anodyne, pro-establishment positions boring everyone to death with their thoughts.

Exceptions: Lucy Kellaway, long gone now but she was very good (nothing to do with business or finance though, more social commentary). Janen Ganesh, also good (again, social commentary). In actual business or finance...nothing interesting. John Lee was quite interesting. MSW was somewhat interesting but also said catastrophically incorrect things often...but she was good for marketing if you started a fund and actually was primarily a fund management journalist (although at the FT she often strayed into politics).

Also, a special mention for Lionel Barber...admitted to leaking stories to traders in a documentary, there are multiple laws against this in the UK, never charged, never investigated. A lot of what changed with the paper happened because of Barber and his opinions on things like Brexit where he interpreted the role of the FT as being a political activist first. Same thing has happened at the Economist when Micklethwait left, the lure of politics and being culturally relevant is too strong.

Lex is also useless. They had some decent people there writing on niche topics. But after the incident with Barber/Wirecard, there has been a big change in how that part of the world works. Many years ago, you would call up someone from Lex to leak a fake M&A rumour and (if you gave them something real later) they would "leak" it (this was confirmed publicly in the Operation Tabernula trial, this is why many papers have pulled back completely on any market-adjacent coverage...afaik, Mark Kleinman is basically the only person trying to do this stuff anymore and it is a million miles from what it once was).