Business

The government could end up giving tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money to an American company to help it restart carbon dioxide production at two plants, a minister has told Sky News.

Igloo Energy is close to being added to the list of supplier casualties as the fallout from surging gas prices continues to shrink the number of players operating in UK’s domestic energy market.

Pret A Manger has revealed plans to hire 3,000 staff through a post-coronavirus strategy that will see it target sales away from city centre offices after a pandemic driven slump.

Ministers are considering efforts to join an existing free trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada - or to strike a series of mini-deals with America - after Boris Johnson appeared to admit a standalone UK-US free trade deal was not an imminent prospect.

The competition watchdog has been asked to look at the structure of the UK music industry over concerns musicians are getting "meagre returns" from the current streaming system.

More than £1bn-worth of state pensions have been underpaid due to repeated human errors which were almost inevitable amid complex rules and outdated IT systems, a spending watchdog has said.

Ladbrokes owner Entain is mulling a £16.4bn takeover offer from US fantasy sports betting firm DraftKings - after rejecting an earlier £14.6bn approach.

Another of the UK's small energy suppliers is lining up advisers to oversee its potential insolvency after ministers ruled out stepping in to prop up companies on the brink of collapse.

A chilled foods distributor whose customers include Asda and J Sainsbury is on the brink of collapse as a maelstrom of headwinds including acute driver shortages threatens further disruption to grocery retailers' supply chains.

It has emerged that the record peacetime public borrowing to pay for the coronavirus crisis during the last financial year has been revised even higher to reflect fears more than £20bn of government-backed loans will never be repaid.