Business

More than 500 employees of revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI have said they will leave if the ousted CEO Sam Altman is not reinstated and the board does not resign. A letter from 505 of the approximately 700 OpenAI employees threatened to quit and jump ship to Microsoft, having received assurances that there are

Jeremy Hunt will this week pledge to review the rules governing payment authentication in what he will describe as a post-Brexit crackdown on fraud. Sky News understands that the chancellor will signal in Wednesday’s autumn statement that the government will seek to repeal EU legislation and replace it with new rules overseen by the City

Strong winds and staff shortages have led to temporary flight restrictions at the UK’s busiest airport causing passenger delays. National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said it was working to minimise disruption at Heathrow caused by weather conditions and short notice absences in the tower. Passengers have been encouraged to check with their airline for information

There will be a lot of positive talk from the chancellor when he delivers his autumn statement on Wednesday, but this will be a fiscal event full of illusory gains. The government is on track to borrow less than previously forecast, which will give rise to a fantasy that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has more space

A court hearing to liquidate a Barclay family holding companies in order to smooth a sale of The Daily Telegraph is poised to be adjourned after a last-gasp offer to repay more than £1bn to Lloyds Banking Group. Sky News understands that a hearing scheduled to take place in the British Virgin Islands on Monday

Alphabet, the $1.7trn (£1.4trn) technology behemoth which owns Google, is in talks to take a stake in Monzo, one of Britain’s biggest digital retail banks. Sky News has learnt that Capital G, an investment fund which deploys capital into fast-growing tech companies, is close to an agreement to lead a funding round that will raise

Sir Jim Ratcliffe and the Glazer family are on the brink of finalising a $33-a-share deal that will see the petrochemicals tycoon acquiring a 25% stake in Manchester United Football Club. Sky News can reveal that months of talks between the Ineos billionaire and the Red Devils’ controlling investors for the last 18 years have

Retail sales took an unexpected fall last month, according to official figures suggesting a slump to COVID lockdown levels with only online operators seeing growth. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported a 0.3% decline overall in October 2023, following a fall of 1.1% in September. A rise in volumes of 0.3% had been expected

Public sector borrowing reached the second highest level for any October since records began, according to official figures, casting doubt on the prime minister’s pledge to cut debt and the chancellor’s capacity to cut taxes. Public sector net borrowing was £14.9bn last month, £4.4bn more than the same point last year and the second highest

The government has announced plans to remove benefits and step up monitoring of welfare recipients in an effort to bring more people into work. Job seekers will have benefits such as free prescriptions and legal aid removed if they’re judged not to be looking for work under the chancellor’s Back to Work Plan which aims

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

The government will this week increase the price offered to offshore wind farm developers after the total failure of its last auction round left the UK’s net zero targets in jeopardy. The target price for the next auction round, known as AR6, is expected to be around £70-£75 per megawatt hour. That is a dramatic

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

House prices have grown in 70 local authorities across Britain despite an overall UK-wide fall, according to the latest analysis from a subsidiary of the UK’s largest mortgage lender. The area with the largest increase was Powys in Wales, which is Wales’s largest and least densely populated county, containing most of Bannau Brycheiniog, formerly known

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.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) wants government action over escalating baby formula prices that are “exploiting” UK families. In an interview with Sky News, WHO called out the “profit-driven” multinational manufacturers for “manipulating the price” of their baby formulas. The most recent research shows prices in the UK have risen 24% over the past two

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