Business

The Bank of England has raised interest rates, slashed its growth forecast and warned that families are about to suffer the biggest fall in living standards since comparable records began three decades ago. On a red letter day in Britain’s cost of living crisis, the Bank said that households will see their post-tax disposable income

Millions of households will discover tomorrow how much their energy bills will rise this spring after the regulator brought forward its announcement of the new price cap. Ofgem will reveal what is expected to be an increase of up to 50% to the price cap for gas and electricity, adding around £700 to bills and

Millions of households will discover on Thursday how much their energy bills will rise this spring after the regulator brought forward its announcement of the new price cap. Ofgem will reveal what is expected to be an increase of up to 50% to the price cap for gas and electricity, adding around £700 to bills

Emergency traffic measures to control congestion at the Port of Dover have already been used as many times this year as in the first six months of 2021 combined, following the introduction of new Brexit border checks. Figures provided to Sky News by National Highways reveal the Dover Traffic Access Protocol (TAP), designed to prevent

More than one in five people are cutting back on their use of gas and electricity as household budgets are squeezed by inflation, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show. The ONS said recent survey figures showed 66% of adults in Britain had experienced an increase in the cost of living over the

Wordle, an online word game which has seen a surge in popularity recently, has been bought by The New York Times. The deal, which saw the media company take over running the game from creator Josh Wardle, was for “an undisclosed price in the low seven figures”. Wordle sees players try and guess a five

Ryanair has warned of more COVID-19 turbulence ahead as it blamed “hysteria” over the Omicron variant for a collapse in bookings over Christmas and reported a quarterly loss of €96m. The airline said demand had improved since the recent lifting of travel restrictions but prices were having to be cut to fill up planes over

The owners of Virgin Media O2 have kicked off talks to raise hundreds of millions of pounds from investors to fund the rollout of fast fibre broadband to millions more British households. Sky News revealed on Sunday that initial discussions with infrastructure funds got underway in recent weeks, with the aim of selling a large

Plans to “breathe fresh life into disadvantaged communities” across England have been announced as part of the government’s Levelling Up White Paper. Wolverhampton and Sheffield will be the first of 20 areas picked to benefit from a “radical new regeneration programme” launched by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). The chosen locations

Downing Street will next week unveil a gender-balanced line-up of business advisers to Boris Johnson, which includes the bosses of some of Britain’s fastest-growing technology companies. Sky News has obtained the list of members of the prime minister’s new business council, which is expected to be published as early as Monday. Half of its 28

The owner of Britain’s biggest chain of upmarket holiday villages is to launch a £4bn auction of the business after recording the most profitable half-year in its history in spite of pandemic-related operating constraints. Sky News has learnt that Brookfield Property Partners, the Canadian property giant, is paving the way to sell Center Parcs UK

Home Secretary Priti Patel has approved the extradition of a British entrepreneur to the US to answer criminal fraud charges. But Mike Lynch’s lawyers say they will file an appeal at the High Court as they fight the order which was earlier signed by Ms Patel following a midnight deadline. It comes on the day

UK entrepreneur Mike Lynch has lost a multi-billion pound fraud action brought over the sale of software company Autonomy to Hewlett Packard (HP) in 2011. The High Court judge found that HP had “substantially” succeeded in its bitter civil case but indicated that the US firm would get considerably less than the $5bn it had

Apple has shrugged off the impact of chip shortages to deliver record quarterly sales of $123.9bn (£92.6bn) and said the constraints will start to ease. The iPhone maker’s revenues for the three months to Christmas were 11% higher than a year ago even though the shortages put a $6bn dent in the figure – something

The competition watchdog has launched a wide-ranging investigation into the music streaming market. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) confirmed last October an intention to examine the sector but was yet to determine the full scope of its inquiry. It followed hot on the heels of a report by MPs the previous month that raised

The head of America’s central bank has declared there is “quite a lot of room to raise interest rates” as it stepped closer to a March hike. Jerome Powell, chair of the US Federal Reserve, made the remarks in a news conference after the bank declared that a hike would “soon be appropriate” – as

The chief executive of a major household energy supplier has cast doubt on whether the sector and government will be able to spare households from a huge spike in bills from April. Greg Jackson, the founder of Octopus Energy, used a letter to the three million households on its books to explain the options facing

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has taken an axe to its global growth forecasts while listing a string of threats to the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. The world’s lender of last resort downgraded a prediction, made in October, for 4.9% growth in collective gross domestic product this year, saying it now expected a

Consumer goods giant Unilever has confirmed plans to cut 1,500 jobs under a shake-up of its global operations. The maker of Dove soap-to-Marmite, which made the announcement after details were apparently leaked on Monday evening, said the cuts to senior and junior management roles were the result of a new, simpler organisational structure. The company

Consumer goods giant Unilever is preparing to cut thousands of management jobs across the business in a “major initiative” due to be announced within days. The cuts will form part of a shake-up, flagged last week by the Marmite to Domestos maker, intended to “drive greater agility, improve category focus, and strengthen accountability”. Unilever declined