Business

Hotel Chocolat has agreed to a £534m takeover offer from Mars, the maker of goods from Snickers bars to Pedigree dog food. The UK specialist chocolatier retailer said the offer represented a 170% premium to its London share price of 139p and the deal would allow its brand to expand internationally This breaking news story

Manchester United has confirmed its chief executive of two years, Richard Arnold, “has decided to step down” as part of a “management transition”. The development was revealed shortly after Sky News reported that Mr Arnold would be replaced by the club’s general counsel, Patrick Stewart, on an interim basis. The change is taking place as

There has been a sharp decline in the rate of inflation to 4.6%, driven by a big easing in energy costs. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the annual rate slowed last month, from the 6.7% figure reported in September, mainly due to the lower energy price cap imposed on households at the start

Roughly 500 jobs are to go at pharma giant Pfizer’s Kent site. The roles are to be cut as Pfizer is discontinuing its pharmaceutical sciences small molecule (PSSM) operations at Sandwich in Kent, the company confirmed to Sky News. It’s part of a company-wide cost-cutting program, Pfizer said. Affected staff were notified on Tuesday morning

The pace of wage growth has eased back from a record level, according to official figures that also showed no change in the UK’s jobless rate despite the tough economy. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that average wages excluding bonuses were 7.7% higher than a year earlier in the three months to September.

IKEA has purchased a second UK shopping centre amid plans to open its first British city store outside of London. The Ingka Group, which owns IKEA, confirmed it will open a store in Brighton city centre after buying Churchill Square Shopping Centre for an estimated £145m. Investment company Abrdn had originally hoped to sell the

Royal Mail has been fined £5.6m by the industry regulator for missing targets covering both first and second-class deliveries. Ofcom said that for the 2022-23 financial year – a time when it was hit by 18 days of strikes by frontline workers – Royal Mail’s reported performance results showed that it had only delivered 73.7%

An infrastructure investor owned by Schroders, the fund management behemoth, is in pole position to buy a solar farms operator that received hundreds of millions of pounds from a scandal-hit local authority. Sky News understands that Schroders Greencoat has become the leading contender to acquire Toucan Energy, which collapsed into administration exactly a year ago.

Nigel Farage will next week begin a formal legal fight with NatWest Group and its former boss as he seeks millions of pounds in damages over the debanking scandal which escalated into a crisis for the state-backed lender. Sky News has learnt that Mr Farage, the former UKIP leader, has instructed London-based Grosvenor Law to

£7.6m is a lot of money to leave on the table by anyone’s standards. NatWest Group, the taxpayer-backed bank, hopes that headline-grabbing number will persuade stakeholders that it has taken a tough line on the severance package handed to Dame Alison Rose, its former chief executive. Indeed, Dame Alison herself might claim that she herself

Families “should feel optimistic” that the worst of the cost-of-living crisis is over, the chancellor has told Sky News. Acknowledging households have “suffered enormously” from energy, food and fuel inflation in the last 18 months, Jeremy Hunt said they should now feel some relief despite the UK economy slowing to a halt in the third

Former NatWest boss Dame Alison Rose is to lose £7.6m of her payout as the bank group seeks to draw a line under the debanking row sparked by the closure of Nigel Farage’s Coutts accounts. However, she will still receive around £1.7m. Dame Alison stepped down in late July after admitting she discussed the former

The number of mortgage holders who have fallen significantly behind on their repayments has risen by 18% over the past year, according to industry data that suggests landlords may be struggling most. UK Finance said 87,930 homeowner mortgages were in arrears during the third quarter of the year – up 7% on the previous three

More than 3,000 jobs are at risk despite a deal, backed by the government, preserving the future of the country’s biggest steelworks. Tata Steel in September confirmed details reported by Sky News that it had secured taxpayer cash to support the Port Talbot plant in South Wales transition to cheaper, greener steel production. Job losses

A regulator has outlined concerns about the “intensity of competition” between fuel retailers. In its first monitoring update since finding that drivers were overcharged by supermarkets last year, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it was yet to receive crucial data on fuel margins covering September and October. It said that while margins –

US actors union Sag-Aftra has agreed a “tentative deal” with Hollywood studio bosses to end a historic 118-day strike. In an announcement on Wednesday, the union said the longest walkout in its history will end at 12.01am US Pacific time on Thursday following a “unanimous vote”. The union, which represents around 160,000 members of the

The Barclay family has renewed its efforts to persuade Britain’s biggest high street lender to regain control of the Telegraph newspapers after restating an offer to repay the bulk of the debt it owes to the bank. Sky News understands that the newspapers’ former owners wrote to Lloyds Banking Group again last week to repeat

After six months of falls house prices across the country are on the rise again, according to analysis from part of the UK’s biggest mortgage lender. Last month, for the first time since March, the cost of buying a house increased as the number of properties on the market shrunk, according to the Halifax house

British Steel has revealed a decarbonisation plan that could result in the loss of 2,000 jobs in Scunthorpe, according to unions. The Chinese-owned company confirmed it was to shut down its blast furnace and replace it with two cheaper, greener electric arc furnaces (EAFs) – one of which was to be located up the coast

The UK information regulator has apologised to the former NatWest chief executive Dame Alison Rose, who resigned after discussing the banking affairs of Nigel Farage with a journalist. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said its comments last month – in which the regulator said a NatWest employee shared information when they should not have done,