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UK investigates if cyberattack led to stock exchange outage
UK officials are worried that a London Stock Exchange outage in August wasn't just the glitch that many suspected. Wall Street Journal sources say the GCHQ intelligence agency is investigating the possibility that the failure may have been due to a cyberattack. It's reportedly taking a close look at the associated code, including time stamps, to determine if there was any suspicious activity. The exchange was in the middle of updating its systems when the outage happened, and there's a fear this left systems open to attack.
BSkyB is dead, long live Sky
Following the merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting in 1990, BSkyB grew to become the biggest pay-TV broadcaster in the UK. Domestic success was fine, but in July, the company decided it was time to cast its net wider, so it agreed a deal with 21st Century Fox to snap up Sky Italia and buy a 57-percent majority share of Sky Deutschland. That transaction has now been approved, creating what Sky says is now "Europe's leading entertainment company." While much will stay the same, some things inevitably must change. You see, now Sky has divisions in Italy and Germany (and 20 million total customers), the British Sky Broadcasting Group name befit a company embarking on an expansion across Europe. As a result, it's changing its name to Sky and listing itself on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol SKY. Shareholders will need to approve the name change first, but we're sure that's just a formality.
Game to complete a remarkable two-year turnaround by going public (again)
Two years after it went into administration, UK video game retailer Game could complete a stunning comeback by floating on the London Stock Exchange for a second time. The company, which was forced to close 300 stores, abandon its European expansion and kill the Gamestation brand in 2012, has surged following last year's console launches and is looking to put the worst behind it by selling a 35 percent stake to investors. Led by investment firm OpCapita, the group will rename itself to Game Digital and is expected to hit London's financial markets within the next four weeks. With 560 stores, a 33 percent share of the new game and hardware market in the UK and over 16 million combined Reward Card members, Game is expected to earn a £400 million valuation -- not bad for a company that was all but dead 26 months ago.
