Assanka, the web and application development company acquired by the Financial Times in January 2012, has officially rebranded as FT Labs.

The FT’s acquisition of Assanka supports the Financial Times’ strategy of delivering world class journalism anywhere, anytime, on any device, with new digital products and services that engage our busy readers.

FT.com MD Rob Grimshaw said: ”Assanka has played a pivotal role in the FT’s digital and mobile success, including developing the FT Web App, which has seen over 2 million users in its first10 months and was awarded the prestigious Best Mobile Innovation for Publishing prize at the Global Mobile Awards2012. Re-branding Assanka as FT Labs completes the company’s integration into the Financial Times, bringing the team’s strong background in innovating web technologies to the FT.”

Andrew Betts, FT Labs founder, added: ”FT Labs will become one of the Financial Times’ centres of innovation. Our expertise puts us at the forefront of emerging web technologies and we will use this knowledge and reputation to not only develop innovative products and services, but also bring the FT further into the web development community.”

FT Labs will participate in the FT’s inaugural hack day on 23-24 May, providing a platform for developers to create new products, tweak existing products and gain feedback on the FT search function and content APIs.

The FT Labs team will continue to develop the FT’s mobile offering and other digital services likeour annotation and clippings tool, plus work closely with other FT senior technology and development teams on new products.

Read more at http://labs.ft.com/ and follow FT Labs on Twitter at @FTLabs

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For more information contact:

Emily Gibbs
Corporate Communications Manager
T: 0207 873 3184
emily.gibbs@ft.com