IB definitely saw value in acquiring FT from RP eight years ago, I'm pretty certain they had a decent ROI, albeit dented a bit by the implosion of the market post Lehman. See the IB vs Ran Decisions court case thread.

IB buying FTG and integrating it loosely with the FT family was probably a good deal for them too. While FT has a steady income stream thru page view ads, FTG has to probably earn its keep by plugging CC applications.

IB itself getting churned by a sequence of private equity firms is nothing unusual either in the cloud cuckoo land of internet firms.

The brilliant business setup of FT which generates content and polices itself for next to no cost to the operator is probably one of the reasons IB forked over a substantial amount of cash to the founder