Latest Business News

One of Britain's biggest chains of veterinary clinics is to cash in on a spike in pet ownership during the pandemic by putting itself up for sale with a £1bn price tag.Sky News has learnt that Medivet is to launch an auction process in the coming weeks following a string of merger and takeover activity in the sector. Medivet, which operates around 300 branches and more than 20 round-the-clock clinics […]

Apple launched a series of new products at an event broadcast from California on 20 April, including AirTags. The AirTag product will rival the original Tile Tracker, which launched following a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2014. The Apple product, which will cost £29, is a small round disk that can be attached to anything and transmit a Bluetooth signal to an iPad or iPhone to alert the user of its […]

The rate of inflation ticked up markedly in March as fuel and fashion costs rose in anticipation of an easing in coronavirus lockdown measures, according to official figures.The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the consumer prices index (CPI) measure rose to 0.7% - essentially unwinding the sharp fall to 0.4% in February that had been driven by the sharpest drop in fashion costs since 2009. The report said that […]

Shares in Netflix have plunged by 11% after subscriptions grew by a weaker than expected four million at the start of this year following a record 2020.The first quarter figure compares to 15.8 million net additions in the same period a year ago as the streaming service was boosted by consumers staying at home during the pandemic. Netflix blamed the "big COVID-19 pull forward" it experienced in 2020 as well […]

Stock market investors are being short-changed by a persistent refusal of companies to reveal when they have received credible takeover approaches, according to one of the City's most influential fund managers.Richard Buxton, the head of strategy at Jupiter Asset Management, told Sky News that shareholders "deserve better disclosure" than they were currently receiving from boards. "I thought the Takeover Panel was insistent that bona fide approaches to companies from credible […]

It is easy to forget, given the decline in smoking in recent decades, the huge importance to many investors of tobacco stocks.The UK stock market is home to the world's second and sixth largest quoted tobacco companies - British American Tobacco and Imperial Brands - and the pair are, respectively, the ninth and 39th largest businesses in the FTSE-100 index. And while many institutional investors may now shun tobacco stocks […]