Mrs. Doubtfire is the latest Broadway production to go on hiatus on Jan. 10 following rising Omicron cases. Producers announced on Sunday that the show is set to return to the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on March 14. “The first few months of a brand new Broadway show are an extraordinarily delicate and important period of time. With the
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One of Britain’s most acquisitive insurance companies has struck a £400m deal to snap up the group which distributes policies for the likes of Marks & Spencer and the RAC. Sky News has learnt that Markerstudy has agreed to buy BGL Insurance, which is owned by the group behind the Comparethemarket price comparison platform in
Twitter said on Sunday that it has permanently suspended the personal account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for repeated violations of their Covid-19 misinformation policy. “We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy,” a Twitter spokesperson said. The permanent ban
Twenty Conservative politicians have urged Boris Johnson to scrap energy taxes as bills continue to rocket. The MPs and peers have written a letter in the Sunday Telegraph to ask the prime minister and Chancellor Rishi Sunak to help consumers facing “fuel poverty”. Energy prices in the UK are being forced up faster than any
UPDATED: The Consumer Technology Association announced late today that its CES trade show next week in Las Vegas will end one day early. The move comes amid record-setting Covid counts in many states across America. “The step was taken as an additional safety measure to the current health protocols that have been put in place
Microsoft says it is aware of a programming flaw which saw some customers’ Exchange servers stop processing emails just as the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve. System administrators, who are sharing workarounds on social media, have dubbed the bug Y2K22 – in the style of the Y2K bug which affected some computers at
Numbers, those longtime pillars of the entertainment business, determiners of pay scale and quantifiers of the hot and the not, are vanishing from public view. Streaming’s inexorable takeover of the industry has altered the once-straightforward process of measuring the performance of TV programs and movies. Of course, there has been grumbling for decades about Nielsen’s
Guy Hands, the billionaire financier, is plotting the sale of the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) biggest landlord in what could be one of Britain’s biggest private equity deals of 2022. Sky News has learnt that Mr Hands’ Terra Firma Capital Partners has begun talks with investment banks about overseeing an auction of Annington Homes. City
Covid, neither gone nor forgotten in 2021, batted investors and markets for another year as attempts at business as usual were stymied by cycles of angst and rebound. Defensive stocks, growth stocks, value stocks, stay-at-home stocks were in one day, out the next. After a volatile year of ups and downs, broader markets ended on
New post-Brexit customs rules for goods arriving in Britain from the European Union have come into effect, changes that a leading food industry body has warned could cause disruption and potentially lead to food shortages. Importers must now make full customs declarations on goods entering the UK from the EU and other countries. Traders can
Los Angeles reported the highest number of new, daily Covid cases since the pandemic began on Friday. The previous record was set almost exactly one year ago, during the peak of the winter surge. On January 4, the county saw 21,849 new infections, according to its data dashboard. Today, the 24-hour count rose to 27,091,
Tencent Holdings, the Chinese technology behemoth, is taking a stake in Monzo, the British-based digital bank which has confounded expectations by securing a $4.5bn (£3.3bn) valuation. Sky News has learnt that Tencent, which has become a prolific investor in Europe‘s burgeoning tech sector, has subscribed to shares as part of a $100m (£74m) top-up to
Asian media giant CJ made one of the entertainment industry’s biggest plays in 2021. CJ ENM’s acquisition of 80% of Endeavor Content’s scripted business valued the firm’s drama offering at almost $1BN. Focus now shifts to the mega deal’s next steps, as Parasite distributor CJ ENM takes control of a portfolio featuring Once Upon a Time…
On the final day of the year, Alex Proud’s nightclubs are still not sold out for New Year celebrations. The founder of the Proud Group who runs a club on the Embankment in London told Sky News the situation is “disastrously bad”. “We’re not yet sold out but the whole of the UK is like
Hollywood’s guilds and unions saved the film and TV business in 2021. Working cooperatively with the industry’s companies, they adopted Covid-19 protocols that got production booming and their members safely back to work, all the while averting strikes that would have crippled recovery efforts. And earlier this year, Hollywood’s unions were among the first in
The owners of Shawbrook, one of Britain’s biggest challenger banks, are exploring plans to list it on the London Stock Exchange less than five years after taking it private. Sky News has learnt that BC Partners and Pollen Street Capital, the two private equity firms which each own 50% of Shawbrook, are holding talks with
Nielsen, building on several of its recent reports about consumption of media by diverse audience groups, has broken out the kinds of podcasts that resonate most with those listeners. Average listening time for Asian Americans, Blacks, Hispanics, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ is about three hours a week, the company noted in a new set
Liquidators of the Thomas Cook travel empire which became one of Britain’s best-known companies during its 178-year history have launched a bid to offload its stake in the company behind the UK’s air traffic control operations. Sky News has learnt that AlixPartners, the professional services firm, launched a process shortly before Christmas to sell Thomas
A surge in demand for content, big companies shedding non-core assets and consolidation in digital media led to a massive rebound in entertainment M&A in 2021, ushered in by two landmark combinations in April and ending with an drumbeat of deals in December. Momentum is seen continuing into 2022 with a major asset, Starz, officially
Households face an average hit of £1,200 to their incomes from the double whammy of rising energy bills and taxes, a think tank has said. The Resolution Foundation (RF) says families are facing a “cost-of-living catastrophe” when the energy price cap goes up and National Insurance contributions (NICs) rise by 1.25 percentage points in April.