Business

Additional financial support has been announced for industry using high quantities of electricity as costs hit record highs and harm competitiveness. The government said it was extending the Energy Intensive Industries Compensation Scheme for another three years and more than doubling its budget in the face of the financial pain being felt. More than £2bn

The final three suitors for Chelsea Football Club have been handed an eleventh-hour demand to stump up £500m more to buy last season’s Champions League-winners – just days before the potential anointment of a preferred bidder. Sky News has learnt that the trio of billionaire-studded consortia were informed in the last 48 hours that Roman

Facebook’s parent company has reported its weakest revenue growth for a decade but witnessed a recovery in its share price following a torrid 2021 to date for the company. Meta Platforms recorded revenue of $27.9bn between January and March – slightly below what Wall St had expected. The company had warned at the time of

Russia is suspending natural gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria. Gas deliveries through the Yamal-Europe pipeline are set to come to a halt on Wednesday morning, officials in Warsaw said. Poland’s state gas company, PGNiG, said on Tuesday it had been told of the move by Russian gas giant Gazprom. Gazprom also informed Bulgarian state

Three lifeboats have been launched to help a P&O ferry that has developed a “mechanical issue” in the Irish Sea. The European Causeway “lost all power”, the RMT union said. It is currently five miles off the coast of Larne, according to tracking website Marine Traffic. P&O tweeted that tugs from Larne and Belfast had been deployed

Interest payments on the national debt rose to their highest level ever last year, as the UK’s public finances reel from the huge cost of the pandemic.  The government’s statistics department said the debt pile stood at £2.3tn last month, with interest payments rising to nearly £70bn, a record amount according to the Office of

The first year of the UK’s post-Brexit trade agreement with the European Union (EU) saw firms on the continent lose a greater percentage volume of trade than exporters from the UK, according to research. The study of 1,200 products, by the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics and Political Science,

Oil prices have hit near two-week lows, with analysts pointing to events in China and the US as possible reasons for a fall in demand. The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, was down by $3.15 or 3% early on Monday, falling to $103.50 a barrel. Earlier in the session, it hit $103.41 –

Rishi Sunak will this week attempt to put his recent political troubles behind him when he courts City figures at a Conservative donors’ dinner designed to bolster party finances. Sky News has learnt that the chancellor will speak at the event in central London on Tuesday evening, with guests being charged £10,000 for a 10-person

The three final bidders for Chelsea FC are being pressed to provide more details of the club’s proposed administration and governance arrangements as they inch closer to becoming the new owners of last season’s Champions League winners. Sky News has learnt that the remaining consortia vying to buy the Blues for well over £2bn were

Supermarkets across the UK have placed limits on how much cooking oil that customers can buy due to supply-chain problems caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Most of the UK’s sunflower oil comes from Ukraine, which has resulted in restrictions applying to that product as well as olive and rapeseed oils at some supermarkets. Tesco

The owner of Britain’s biggest chain of upmarket holiday villages is lining up bankers to oversee a review of its options, which could pave the way for an auction valuing it at £4bn. Sky News understands that Brookfield Property Partners, the Canadian property giant, is close to appointing Barclays to advise on the future of

For most people, price hikes at the petrol pump and supermarket checkout have not been matched by proportionate salary rises. Inflation is expected to outpace pay growth until the end of 2023, according to official government forecasts. But in a few jobs, wages are keeping up with the cost of living. Sky News analysis of

Retail sales plunged by 1.4% last month – far more than expected – as consumers tightened their belts in the face of the squeeze in living costs, according to official figures. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the decline was largely driven by a drop in demand for online purchases and pointed to dented

Elon Musk has secured the financing for his takeover bid of Twitter, including £16.1bn of his own fortune, according to a new regulatory filing on Thursday. The remainder of the funding, amounting to more than £19.5bn, will be provided through two debt commitment letters offering a series of loans from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding. Twitter

Sir Lewis Hamilton and Serena Williams, two of the world’s biggest sports stars, are committing millions of pounds to one of the bids vying to become the new owners of Chelsea Football Club. Sky News can exclusively reveal the full line-up of investors backing the takeover offer for Chelsea spearheaded by Sir Martin Broughton, the

The billionaire backers of the Boston Celtics and Toronto Maple Leafs have committed to “lifetime ownership” of Chelsea Football Club if they triumph in the £2.5bn auction of the Premier League side. Speaking exclusively to Sky News, Steve Pagliuca and Larry Tanenbaum said they and their families wanted to make “a long-term commitment” to preserving

Streaming titan Netflix lost subscribers in the first three months of this year after years of explosive growth, sending the company’s shares plummeting. After losing 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter, Netflix indicated in its financial results that it could shed a further two million members in the second quarter of this year. The company

Netflix has hinted it could crack down on password sharing after losing 300,000 subscribers in the first three months of the year. This is the first time Netflix has reported a loss in subscribers in more than a decade, with the company warning another two million subscribers could leave in the three months to July.

Bosses of the UK’s largest energy firms have called on the government to intervene with “unprecedented” measures to prevent a fuel poverty crisis next winter. The chief executives told MPs investigating energy prices that while pre-payment customers were already reeling from the effects of rising bills, they expected the numbers in financial distress to only

The price of more than a million train tickets will be cut by up to half in April and May as the government seeks to ease cost of living pressures – but commuters will not benefit as only off-peak and advanced tickets are included in the sale. Dubbed the Great British Rail Sale, Transport Secretary

A billionaire brewing heir is backing one of the trio of consortia which remain in the hunt to buy Chelsea FC as the auction of the Premier League club enters its final stages. Sky News has learnt that Alejandro Santo Domingo, a Colombian citizen who sits on the board of the Budweiser-owner ABInBev, is part

The founder of one of Britain’s biggest privately held consumer finance groups is in talks about the sale of a minority stake that would yield a windfall worth hundreds of millions of pounds. Sky News has learnt that Together Financial Services, which specialises in areas such as mortgage lending and auction finance, has asked private

George Osborne, the former chancellor, has been parachuted in to help the Los Angeles Dodgers part-owner Todd Boehly clinch a takeover of Chelsea Football Club that would rank as the most lucrative sports franchise sale in history. Sky News can exclusively reveal that Robey Warshaw, the City advisory firm that Mr Osborne joined last year,

Twitter’s board of directors unanimously adopted a “poison pill” defence in response to Elon Musk’s proposal to buy the company and take it private, the social media giant has said. The strategy is formally called a “limited duration shareholder rights plan” and is used to defend against hostile takeovers. Twitter said the move aims to

The Ricketts family-led consortium has withdrawn its bid to buy Chelsea Football Club. The Chicago Cubs owners and their partners opted not to submit a final bid for the Blues, due to “unusual dynamics around the sales process”. Tom and Laura Ricketts had partnered with US billionaires Ken Griffin and Dan Gilbert to place a

When Elon Musk declared on 4 April that he had become the biggest single shareholder in Twitter there was much head scratching as to why the Tesla chief executive had taken his 9.2% stake. Some commentators assumed he was just having a bit of fun. A few days earlier, he had run a Twitter poll,

Billionaire Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for $41.39bn, a regulatory filing showed. The Tesla CEO’s offer price of $54.20 per share represents a 38% premium to the closing price of Twitter’s stock on 1 April, the last trading day before his investment of over 9% in the company was publicly announced. It comes

A Californian investment firm would become the largest shareholder in Chelsea FC if a consortium spearheaded by a part-owner of the LA Dodgers baseball team wins the battle to buy the Stamford Bridge club. Sky News has learnt that Clearlake Capital would own at least 50% of Chelsea’s shares under a bid proposal to be

A court in Jersey has frozen $7bn (£5.4bn) in assets linked to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. The assets being targeted are either located in Jersey, or owned by Jersey-incorporated entities, the Law Offices Department of Jersey said. Police searched addresses suspected of being connected to Mr Abramavich‘s business activities on Tuesday. The island of Jersey

A second P&O ferry has been further detained by the authorities in as many days following a failed inspection, likely scuppering the scandal-hit company’s plans to run a service between Dover and Calais from Easter. It emerged earlier on Wednesday that the Pride of Kent – first detained by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA)

P&O Ferries’ hopes of resuming cross-Channel services between Dover and Calais later this week appear to have suffered a big blow after the Spirit of Britain was further detained, according to the French authorities. The company, universally condemned for its treatment of almost 800 seafarers who were sacked without notice last month, had planned for

The annual rate of inflation shot up to a fresh 30-year high of 7% in March reflecting, for the first time, the immediate effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The largest contributors to growing inflation were increased fuel prices and energy bills, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The consumer prices index (CPI)