Sky reveals it is still hooked on top football – Editor’s Letter February 10, 2015 THIS was the auction that Sky dared not lose. The satellite broadcaster has built itself on the back of live football and although it’s now a much more broadly-focused business than it ever was, the appeal of the Premier League is still what convinces hundreds of thousands of subscribers to stick with the service come [...]
Premier League sells TV rights for record £5.14bn to Sky and BT February 10, 2015 Premier League games are worth more money than ever before after the league agreed a new TV rights deal worth an incredible £5.136bn with Sky and BT. The average live Premier League football game will cost £10.2m to screen from the 2016-17 onwards, after Sky and BT shared the 168 games split across [...]
Ex-HSBC boss Lord Green under fire over Swiss bank tax evasion row February 9, 2015 Ex-HSBC boss Lord Green was under intense pressure last night after revelations that HSBC’s Swiss private banking arm helped clients evade and avoid hundreds of millions of pounds of taxes. The bank said it now refuses to work with anyone it suspects of dodging taxes, but the focus has fallen on Green’s time as chief [...]
Virgin Active IPO: Gym chain set for public listing in South Africa February 5, 2015 Gym chain Virgin Active has hired five banks in recent days to work on a public listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Standard Bank and UBS have been hired in recent days to work on the flotation which will value the company at around £1.5bn, according [...]
Premier League set for £4bn in TV auction bids and Sky and BT prepare for battle February 5, 2015 Today marks the closing of the deadline for bids in the multi-billion pound auction for the UK TV broadcast rights of the Premier League. The three seasons to 2019 of the most-watched football league in the world will certainly see BT and Sky battle it out for the coveted rights. But with the added possibility [...]
Analysts split on Premier League fallout for Sky February 5, 2015 WITH BIDS for the Premier League’s TV rights in, analysts were split this week over the potential damage or lack thereof that either winning the same package of games or losing games to BT could have on Sky. “The Premier League rights auction has been a major overhang on the Sky share price but potentially [...]
Hong Kong nom nom: Getting to grips with the burgeoning foodie scene February 5, 2015 Hong Kong at night falls somewhere between Manhattan and Magaluf, combining the grandeur of the former with the trashy hedonism of the latter. I was there in September when the humidity was in the 90s and the streets were heaving with twenty-somethings moving from bar to club. It’s also home to one of the most [...]
Boris Bike sponsorship deal: Santander reportedly in line to beat Coca-Cola as Barclays replacement February 5, 2015 Santander UK is reportedly on the cusp of signing a £50m deal which would see it replace Barclays as the main sponsor of London's Boris Bike scheme. The deal would see Santander UK pay up to £7.5m annually for seven years, putting its red-and-white branding in the place of the blue hues currently offered by Barclays. [...]
Vodafone exceeds expectations with strong UK growth February 5, 2015 Vodafone is doing better than analysts had expected, both in the UK and beyond. The figures During the three months to 31 December, group service revenue for the UK telecoms company was £9,789m. Once merger and acquisition activity and foreign exchange rates had been accounted for, this was a 0.4 per cent decline compared [...]
Sky staves off the cold winter once again as profits and customer numbers rise February 4, 2015 The City cheered Sky yesterday as – despite increasing competition in sport, huge amounts of industry consolidation occurring all around it and a mobile offering due to launch behind those of rivals – the firm continues to grow. With the former exclusively UK broadcaster now reporting solid growth across all of its three European markets, [...]