Latest Business News

Dame Carolyn Fairbairn has joined the race to head Channel 4, the state-owned broadcaster, two years after leaving the CBI after a period of fractious ties between Britain’s biggest employers’ group and Boris Johnson’s administration.Sky News has learnt that Dame Carolyn is among a handful of contenders shortlisted to become Channel 4's next chairman as it tries to fend off the prospect of privatisation. Dame Carolyn, who could not be […]

The FTSE 100 has joined a global markets sell-off as it followed Wall Street into the red amid jitters over rate rises and the outlook for tech stocks.London's leading share index fell by more than 100 points, or about 1.5%, while Germany's Dax and France's Cac 40 were each down by around 2%. The FTSE 100 later partly recovered to close 91 points, or 1.2%, down. It comes after days […]

The owner of restaurant chains Wagamama and Frankie & Benny's has warned that consumer confidence may take a while to bounce back even after Plan B restrictions are lifted.Sales at The Restaurant Group last month were hit by working from home guidance, calls for caution in socialising and increased travel testing requirements, the company revealed in a trading update. The restrictions put a dampener in the recovery of Wagamama, which […]

A former Conservative MEP is to become a director of the audit regulator as the government seeks to head off criticism of the body responsible for overseeing corporate governance in company boardrooms.Sky News has learnt that Sir Ashley Fox, who was a member of the European Parliament for a decade, will be one of several appointments to the board of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) in the coming weeks. Sir […]

People should "get back to work" after Plan B rules were eased, the business secretary has said.Kwasi Kwarteng extolled the benefits of office-based staff interacting directly as he called for a return to "some degree of normality". The comments came after the government this week dropped working from home guidance that was reintroduced late last year to try to combat the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Please use […]

Retail sales fell by a worse than expected 3.7% last month as the Omicron variant was blamed for keeping shoppers away.The month-on-month decline in sales volumes reported by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) follows a strong November, when some consumers chose to make Christmas purchases early. It was significantly worse than the 0.6% decline that had been pencilled in by forecasters and highlighted the pressure on businesses created by […]

Netflix suffered a horror show as its shares lost a fifth of their value after latest subscriber numbers disappointed Wall Street.The streaming service added 8.3 million customers in the last three months of 2021 - short of the 8.5 million that the company had targeted, despite a heavy line-up of new releases such as Don't Look Up and Red Notice. It pencilled in subscriber growth of 2.5 million for the […]

Shares in Peloton, the connected fitness firm, have fallen by more than 20% on a report the company is to cease production of its treadmills and bikes because of plunging demand.Trading in the Nasdaq-listed stock was temporarily halted after Sky's sister news provider CNBC published details of the company's apparent decision which, it said, were contained in a confidential internal presentation it had obtained. CNBC said the document, dated 10 […]

Tinder is charging young gay and lesbian users and people over 30 more for its premium service, according to an investigation by Which?The watchdog says its research could suggest discrimination by the dating app and a breach of UK law. Which? asked almost 200 mystery shoppers to create real profiles and make a note of prices quoted for Tinder Plus - a premium package with perks such as unlimited "Likes" […]

Plans for a new British-owned battery gigaplant in Northumberland have been boosted by the commitment of around £100m of government funds to the £3.8bn scheme.The Britishvolt project intends to manufacture power cells for 300,000 electric vehicle battery packs a year at a new factory on the site of the former Blyth Power Station. The injection of taxpayer funding comes via the Automotive Transformation Fund, and will be augmented by £1.7bn […]