Business

Water firms in England and Wales have been ordered to return £157.6m to customers due to their poor performance. Ofwat said the rebate would come off bills for households and businesses in 2025-26. Last year, the water regulator ordered firms to repay £114m as part of a similar move. It comes as water bills in

A big four audit firm and one of Britain’s high street banks have resumed their membership of the CBI, delivering a boost to the scandal-hit lobbying group’s hopes that it can recover its long-standing influence in government. Sky News has learnt that KPMG and NatWest Group returned to being full members of the CBI this

A rescue deal for the British operations of TGI Fridays which will salvage more than 2,000 jobs is on the verge of being finalised this weekend. Sky News has learnt that Breal Capital and Calveton, which jointly own the upmarket restaurants business D&D London, could agree a deal to acquire the majority of TGI Fridays

Before we get onto the budget and what Rachel Reeves might do to fiddle her fiscal rules and give herself a little more room to spend, I want you to ponder, for a moment, a recent report from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). This wasn’t one of those big OBR reports that get lots

An investor in one of Britain’s most popular price comparison sites is exploring the sale of its stake in a deal that could value it at more than £4bn. Sky News has learnt that the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is lining up advisers to assess whether to sell its 30% holding in Compare

Ministers are plotting a shake-up of Britain’s drive to attract inward investment days before a summit they will claim demonstrates the country is “open for business”. Sky News has learnt that officials are drawing up plans to merge the Office for Investment – a joint venture between the Department for Business and Trade and Number

The UK needs a strategy to meet growing demand for data centres or risk losing its advantage in the race to develop artificial intelligence (AI), one of the sector’s largest players has told Sky News. Data centres – warehouses housing processors that power cloud computing – are central to the digital economy. They provide the

The boss of the UK motor industry’s lobby group has blamed “criminal activity” for UK-made luxury cars finding their way into sanction-hit Russia. The chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) Mike Hawes was speaking just over a week after Sky News uncovered a system of getting vehicles from the UK

The government has pledged nearly £22bn to fund projects that capture greenhouse gases from polluting plants and store them underground, as it races to reach strict climate targets. The plans are designed to generate private investment and jobs in Merseyside and Teesside, two industry-heavy areas that will be home to the new “carbon capture clusters”.

Financial markets are now pricing in a shock interest rate cut for the UK at the next Bank of England meeting following remarks by its governor. There was a huge shift in expectations after Andrew Bailey told the Guardian newspaper the bank could be “a bit more aggressive” in its approach. He talked about inflation

Compass Group, the FTSE-100 catering giant which counts the Wimbledon tennis championships among its most prestigious contracts, is in talks with its investors about increasing its boss’s potential pay package by millions of pounds a year. Sky News has learnt that Compass is consulting its biggest institutional shareholders about substantial hikes to the annual bonus

Israel is fighting on at least four fronts, threatening a war across the oil-rich Middle East, but there is no great sense of fear yet as far as financial markets are concerned. Israel’s actions against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the ultimate sponsors of these groups, Iran, has proved

Saga, the London-listed financial services and travel provider for over-50s consumers, is in detailed talks with one of Europe’s biggest insurers about a deal that will allow it to repay a chunk of its huge debt pile. Sky News has learnt that Saga is in exclusive negotiations with Ageas, a Belgian insurer which tried to

Mulberry, the struggling UK luxury brand, has rejected a proposed takeover bid by Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group. Frasers, which is majority owned by the tycoon and best-known for its Sports Direct brand, made an offer on Monday that valued Mulberry at £83m. The company is the second largest shareholder in Mulberry, with a 37% holding.

It’s a momentous day in UK industrial history, in two respects. But what have the closures of the last blast furnace at Port Talbot and the final British coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar got to do with one other? In one respect the common factor is coal. The blast furnace at Port Talbot is one

A report into a potential “second Post Office IT scandal” has found it is “a reasonable likelihood” that Capture software “created shortfalls” for sub-postmasters prior to the Horizon scandal. The system, which was the predecessor to Horizon, was rolled out to branches from 1993 onwards. At least 40 former sub-postmasters claim they were falsely accused

The UK’s biggest steelworks will cease production today after more than 100 years, leading to thousands of job losses across South Wales. Blast Furnace 4 – the final furnace operating at Tata Steel’s plant in Port Talbot – will be fully shut down at about 5pm, with the last steel made late on Monday evening.

Ordinary investors will be given the chance to participate in a £500m flotation of Applied Nutrition, the fast-growing sports supplements maker, when it unveils plans for an initial public offering in London this week. Sky News has learnt that Liverpool-based Applied Nutrition will issue an announcement signalling its expected intention to float on Monday morning,

Carlyle, the American investment giant, has become the latest global fund to weigh an investment in Thames Water as the stricken utility races to avoid being nationalised. Sky News has learnt that Carlyle, which has roughly $435bn in assets under management, is at the very preliminary stages of assessing whether an investment in Thames Water

A former owner of Missguided, the youth fashion brand, is in talks to buy Kurt Geiger, the upmarket shoe and accessories retailer. Sky News has learnt that Alteri Investors, which was backed by the global private equity giant Apollo Management when it launched a decade ago, is among a number of parties in discussions about