The Wall Street Journal has unveiled its latest weapon in its battle with the Financial Times for global supremacy.

The WSJ - part of the Dow Jones group - is spending £36m ($60m) on a makeover of its European edition.

The redesigned paper - launched on Monday - is bigger, uses colour on the front page and has a special section focusing on technology.

Cover price cut

Circulation in Europe is currently 83,000, up 17% in 1999. The aim is to double that figure.

But although the Brussels-based WSJ Europe is cutting its cover price from £1.25 to £1, it is still more expensive than the FT, which sells for 85p. It has a European circulation of 323,000.

The two top English language financial titles are increasingly expanding into each other's geographical heartland, as well as developing their internet interests.

The London-based FT, owned by the Pearson group, is also prepared to spend large amounts of money on its plans.

Circulation in the US has trebled in the past two years to 102,000, although there is some way to go to catch the WSJ, which sells 1.8m.

And when the FT's hopes of buying a newspaper in Germany came to nothing, it decided to set up its own.

Financial Times Deutschland, a joint venture with Gruner & Jahr, is due to be launched in February.

Quality counts

It all seems a lot of money when relatively small circulations are involved, but it's the quality of the readers, not the quantity, that matters.

The average household income of WSJ Europe readers is £210,000 ($330,000). Advertisers would welcome increased access to such an influential group.

And it is the nature of those readers that makes Dow Jones chief executive Peter Kann believe WSJ Europe can compete.

He talks of a global mobility of mind as well as body.

"The businessperson at that level in the UK or in Germany has very similar interests to the businessperson in New York or San Francisco or Singapore or Hong Kong when it comes to the major trends," he told the BBC.

"Obviously they have particular regional interests and in some cases national ones and we play to those as well."

Free online access

But both the FT and the WSJ, while investing heavily in print, are also paying close attention to their online interests.

Subscribers to The Wall Street Journal Europe will be offered one year's free access to the online version.

Last year the WSJ site earned £19m ($30m) from its 375,000 subscribers.

Despite the internet's cultural creed of free information, the WSJ believes there is a market for people willing to pay for it.

The website will have access to the work of hundreds of Dow Jones journalists providing up-to-date breaking news.

Peter Kann believes that while there is room for integration between print and online, both have their own individual function.

Extra staff

That is how the FT is developing its website. FT.com, which does not charge for access, had revenues of £6m ($9.9m) last year.

About 100 extra journalists have been hired, working alongside their print colleagues.

The expanded site is due to be relaunched in the next few weeks, and there will be another internet service, FT Market Watch, bringing financial news to private investors.

FT editor Richard Lambert believes this online presence will be at the heart of the company's future growth.

He hopes those who come to the title online will eventually graduate to buying the newspaper.

The FT has a long way to go to catch the WSJ in terms of circulation.

But it might well be online that the papers lay the foundations for their future development.