Business

Rishi Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen have insisted they will work together to find a solution to the row over the Northern Ireland Protocol, as pressure grows to break the diplomatic deadlock. In a call on Thursday, the prime minister and the European Commission president discussed the post-Brexit trading arrangements in Northern Ireland. A

Cryptocurrency trading is “too dangerous” to remain outside mainstream financial regulation and could pose “a systemic problem” without action, the deputy governor of the Bank of England has warned. Speaking for the first time since the founder of the crypto trading platform FTX was arrested and charged with massive fraud, Sir Jon Cunliffe told Sky

The average UK property is £17,500 more expensive now than a year ago though house price growth has slowed and London properties are nearly 25% cheaper than five years ago, according to data from property website Zoopla. House prices have risen 7.5% over the past year, though the increase has slowed in the past three

An insolvent solar farms empire which received hundreds of millions of pounds in funding from a debt-laden English local authority is being put up for sale. Sky News has learnt that Interpath Advisory, which was appointed administrator to Toucan Energy last month, will confirm on Friday that KPMG, the accountancy firm, has been hired to

Given the drama of 2022, there is no guessing what 2023 will throw at us. Still, that needn’t stop us having a shot, so without further ado, here are some of the charts that might help tell the story of 2023. 1. The gas divergence One of the most curious things about 2022 was that

Government borrowing reached the highest amount for November since records began in 1993, official data shows. Last month, net public sector borrowing – excluding public sector banks – totalled £22bn, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The figure was up by £13.9bn compared to November 2021 and nearly £9bn higher than

Elon Musk has said he will resign as CEO of Twitter “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job”. The Twitter boss said following that he would “just run the software and servers teams”. It comes after Musk launched a poll asking users for their verdict on his tenure, saying he

When looking back at the year gone by, it is rather hard to know where to start. The death of a monarch, war in mainland Europe, the shortest running prime minister of all time. It has been an extraordinary 12 months of news, especially for the economy. Rather than running through the whole thing in

The business secretary has ordered an investment firm backed by sanctioned Russian oligarchs to sell regional broadband provider Upp, citing national security concerns. Grant Shapps ruled that the ownership of LetterOne, known as L1, was a national security risk. Its investors include the sanctioned Russian businessman Mikhail Fridman. The decision was made under the provisions

The founder of Xpediator, a London-listed logistics company, is hatching a plan to take it private. Sky News understands that Stephen Blyth, who stepped down as Xpediator’s chief executive in 2020, has assembled financial backing for a takeover offer. The identity of Mr Blyth’s backers and the price at which a bid would be pitched

Visits to high streets slumped last week, according to industry data showing a “key” impact from rail strikes amid wider evidence of a hit to the economy from the industrial action. Springboard reported that shopper numbers across Britain fell 4.6% last week versus the week before amid the disruption to public transport – also blamed

Elon Musk is polling Twitter users to ask if he should step down as head of the social media platform. Mr Musk, one of the world’s richest people, bought Twitter for $44bn in late October, but his short tenure has been turbulent. The owner of Tesla and SpaceX set his poll in motion just after

Construction businesses are going bust at their fastest rate in a decade, driving the number of company insolvencies to its highest level since the financial crisis. Rising material costs, staff shortages and plummeting consumer demand are weighing on businesses, forcing them to squeeze their margins to unsustainable levels. Official figures show that in the second

The former head of the Bank of England’s governing body is to chair the bulk of Goldman Sachs’ operations outside the US – one of the most influential jobs at the Wall Street titan. Sky News has learnt that Sir Bradley Fried, who stepped down as chair of the Court of the Bank of England only

Rishi Sunak has abandoned his predecessor’s plan to intervene in global energy markets by spending billions of pounds on foreign gas imports. Sky News has learnt that Liz Truss’s Energy Supply Taskforce (EST), which was launched in September, is being scrapped. Headed by Madelaine McTernan, who was director-general of the government’s COVID-19 Vaccine Taskforce, the

There was a surprise fall in retail sales last month as shoppers remained cautious given the squeeze on budgets from inflation in the run-up to Christmas. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported a fall in sales volumes of 0.3% compared to October when the effects of fuel sales were excluded. Economists had expected to

Workers at Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ Goodwood factory are to receive a pay award worth up to 17.6% after negotiations between the luxury automaker and Unite the union. In all, 1,200 production workers at the West Sussex plant are to receive a salary boost of 10% and a one-off payment of £2,000 from January, avoiding the

One might have thought, to judge from the acres of newsprint and hours of airtime devoted to its documentary about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, that this would be a boom time for Netflix. Not so. Shares of the streaming giant fell by more than 8% this afternoon, wiping $11.5bn from its stock market

The Bank of England has revealed a 0.5 percentage point interest rate increase – its ninth consecutive rise as it maintains its battle against inflation. The decision, by its monetary policy committee (MPC), took the bank rate to 3.5% – a fresh high not seen since the 2008 financial crisis. The move, however, represented a

The rules limiting the volume of liquids allowed on planes and requiring electronics to be taken out of hand luggage in security are to change. The government has set a deadline of June 2024 for major UK airports to install new security technology, which will make obsolete the rule to bring no more than 100ml