Business

The owner of Hobbycraft has made a late swoop to buy The Original Factory Shop (TOFS) after talks with a rival suitor stalled at the 11th hour. Sky News understands that Modella Capital, which has also been pursuing WH Smith’s high street stores in recent weeks, is close to trumping rival bidder Baaj Capital with

The boss of Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) has said she is “appalled and disgusted” by the sex trafficking claims against her predecessor Mike Jeffries. Fran Horowitz, who has led the US-based company since the departure of Mr Jeffries, signalled in an interview with Sky News that A&F had examined and transformed its culture since the

Heathrow is set to announce a multibillion-pound expansion plan to create extra capacity at the airport – as it prepares its proposal for a third runway. The UK’s biggest airport has announced a “once-in-a-generation investment” beginning this year to improve existing buildings and boost passenger numbers. The development is separate from a new runway –

OpenAI’s chief executive and co-founder has told Sky News that his platform is “not for sale” after a group led by Elon Musk launched an unsolicited $97.4bn (£78.7bn) bid overnight. Sam Altman, who is attending the Paris AI Summit with world leaders, was asked whether he can still afford OpenAI after Mr Musk’s bid. “The

British wholesale gas prices have reached a more than two-year high, risking yet more expensive energy bills. Low rates of gas storage in Britain and across Europe, combined with cold weather, have increased demand for gas to heat homes. It’s brought the price up to 140 pence a therm (a unit of heat used to

Companies are slowing investment until they see more momentum in the economy, according to a closely-watched report on employment conditions which warns that budget measures are “acting as brakes” on hiring. The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG’s latest snapshot on recruitment found permanent staff vacancies declined at the steepest rate since August 2020

Valentine’s Day might be a gift-giving occasion your wallet could do without, but it’s thousands of pounds cheaper than being alone. Being single costs £2,533 more a year, Sky News can reveal. Suddenly, that box of chocolates doesn’t seem so expensive. Single people are forced to spend 22% more on rent or mortgages, council tax

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has called in the bosses of Britain’s biggest high street lenders for a fresh round of talks on the government’s economic growth agenda. Sky News has learnt that executives from companies including Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest and Nationwide have been asked to attend a meeting with Ms Reeves on

Legal & General (L&G), the FTSE-100 insurance and asset management group, is preparing to kick off a search for a successor to chairman Sir John Kingman. Sky News has learnt that the company, which this week announced a major corporate deal in the US, is close to appointing headhunters to oversee the appointment process. City

Apple has reportedly been ordered by the UK government to allow it access to encrypted data stored by the company’s users worldwide in its cloud service. At the moment, only the Apple account holder can access such data – not even the US technology giant can see it. Apple, which makes iPhones, iPads and iMacs,

The private equity backer of one of Britain’s oldest industrial manufacturing groups is in talks to sell an advanced defence technology business that will bring its parent’s dismantling close to completion. Sky News has learnt that Advent International, the buyout firm which bought Cobham for £4bn in 2020 and then swooped on London-listed Ultra Electronics

The government is spending £22bn on “unproven” technologies which will have a “very significant effect” on energy bills, according to an influential committee of MPs. There has been no assessment of whether the programme to capture and store carbon from the atmosphere is affordable for billpayers, said a report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC)

The Bank of England has cut interest rates by another quarter percentage point, bringing down the cost of borrowing to 4.5%. And in a sign that households can expect more cuts in the months to come, two members of the Bank‘s Monetary Policy Committee said they would have preferred to reduce rates even more, by

Planning rules will be ripped up to make it easier to build new nuclear reactors and create thousands of highly skilled jobs, the government has announced. The reforms are the latest in a series of proposals designed to “get Britain building” to help grow the economy, after powers for environmental quangos to delay infrastructure projects

Tesco has expressed interest in acquiring more than 100 Crown Post Offices whose future has been placed under review as the state-owned company explores shifting them to a franchise model. Sky News has learnt that Nigel Railton, the Post Office chairman, told a group of MPs this week that Britain’s biggest retailer had informed it

An arms race for artificial intelligence (AI) supremacy, triggered by recent panic over Chinese chatbot DeepSeek, risks amplifying the existential dangers of superintelligence, according to one of the “godfathers” of AI. Canadian machine learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, author of the first International AI Safety Report to be presented at an international AI summit in Paris