Here are the business stories making the headlines across Scotland and the UK this morning.
Aberdonian founder of Innis & Gunn apologises to staff as beer firm enters administration
The Aberdonian founder of beer firm Innis & Gunn has apologised as the company entered administration with the loss of more than 100 jobs.
Dougal Gunn Sharp, who was born in Aberdeen and raised in Elgin, started the Scottish craft beer firm in 2003.
The brand and its intellectual property have been acquired from administration by Tennent’s lager owner C&C Group in a £4.5million deal. However, the deal does not include the firm’s workforce or its Perth brewery.
Andy Murray chips in as investor for luxury golf brand Manors
Sir Andy Murray has become the latest celebrity to invest in Manors, a fast-growing maker of golfing attire that has raised £3million to accelerate its push into the lucrative US market.
The two-time Wimbledon champion has joined a shareholder register that includes Theo Walcott, the former Arsenal and England footballer, Nicholas Hoult, the actor, and Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, the TV personalities known as Ant and Dec, after Redrice Ventures, of which Murray is an associate partner, led Manors’ latest funding round.
Manors, whose polo shirts sell for as much as £110, makes about 40% of its sales in the United States and plans to use the £3million it has raised from Redrice and other investors to “fuel its next phase of international expansion”.
VirginMedia O2 and VodafoneThree in talks over broadband deal
VirginMedia O2 is in advanced talks with VodafoneThree over its first major commercial broadband deal, which would help its ambitions to position itself as a challenger to BT’s Openreach.
VMO2, which operates Britain’s second largest broadband network, has been shedding customers as new entrants flood an already competitive market. A wholesale deal would allow VodafoneThree, which does not operate its own broadband infrastructure in the UK, to load its customers on to VMO2’s network.
Operators are trying to recoup the billions of pounds spent on rolling out broadband across the country by increasing the number of customers using their networks. The penetration rate across VMO2’s footprint stands at about 30 per cent, according to estimates from Enders Analysis.
Axel Springer agrees to buy Telegraph Media Group in £575m deal
European media firm Axel Springer has agreed to purchase the Telegraph Media Group (TMG) in a deal costing £575million.
The deal trumps the £500million takeover proposed late last year by the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT). The government had ordered an investigation into that deal on public interest and competition grounds.
TMG owns the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph, the Telegraph Magazine and the website and app.
Aberdeen entrepreneur takes control of tanning studio chain
Aberdeen entrepreneur Vikki Field has completed a management buyout of sunbed salon chain Tan Allure.
The chain operates salons in Cove, Dyce, Westhill and Bridge of Don.
Vikki, from Chapelton, says the salons have been busier than ever after the city endured a record-breaking stretch without sunlight.