Branding

Can one of the most famous brands in leather be revived?

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Brand abolished

All current accounts with the Norwich and Peterborough building society will be closed, the brand abolished, and some branches closed.

Owners Yorkshire Building Society (YBS), the UK's second largest mutual, said it would close 28 N&P branches and 20 YBS branches this year.

Customers who want to continue operating a current account will have to find a new bank or building society.

A total of 440 jobs are at risk as a result of the overhaul.

The N&P customers will be contacted and told of their options before their accounts are closed on 31 August 2017, as the YBS concentrates on savings and mortgages.
The announcement comes a year after YBS embarked on a separate rebranding and branch closure programme, in which N&P was unaffected.

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Sky profits not sky-high

Broadcaster Sky has reported a 9% fall in operating profits after paying more for broadcast rights to Premier League football matches.

Operating profits at the company fell to £679m for the six months to 31 December.
However, Sky said that its financial performance had been "good".
Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox owns 39% of the company. Late last year, it offered to buy out the remaining 61% of the business. 

Fox needs regulatory approval for the $14.6bn offer in both the UK and Europe, where it does about a third of its business. 

Sky has 22 million customers in the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Italy, Germany and Austria.
Chief executive Jeremy Darroch said: "In a year in which we are absorbing significantly higher programming costs, as a result of the step up in Premier League costs, our financial performance has been good."

Operating profit was £65m lower on the year before, even though it absorbed an additional £314m of Premier League costs in the period.
The company said it had added more than 500,000 new customers.

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