From their website:
Since 1928, half the shares have been owned by the Financial Times, a subsidiary of Pearson, the other half by a group of independent shareholders, including many members of the staff. The editor's independence is guaranteed by the existence of a board of trustees, which formally appoints him and without whose permission he cannot be removed.

This is what they claim as their policy:

What, besides free trade and free markets, does The Economist believe in? "It is to the Radicals that The Economist still likes to think of itself as belonging. The extreme centre is the paper's historical position." That is as true today as when Crowther said it in 1955. The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability. It has backed conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It has supported the Americans in Vietnam. But it has also endorsed Harold Wilson and Bill Clinton, and espoused a variety of liberal causes: opposing capital punishment from its earliest days, while favouring penal reform and decolonisation, as well as--more recently--gun control and gay marriage.

The recently appointed new editor John Micklethwait, replaced the 13 year tenure of Bill Emmot. Micklethwait comes from the US office and seems to have taken the paper on a different track. There are several other writers who have come to the paper via being based in the US.

None of the articles in the paper are signed, though there is no secret as to the staff.

I don't read it - I just get offers to be a subscriber with alarming regularity.

You can't be me, I'm taken