Law and business news round-up: Sky, Yahoo, BA, Pfizer

A day later than usual, our latest round-up of the commercial news stories that any aspiring lawyer should be up to speed with shows that the world does not pause in the run-up to the Xmas holidays – if anything, momentous events are accelerating while many of us wind down before hopefully enjoying some time off. This week we focus on the ambitions and problems of two media giants, upcoming industrial action in yet another sector, and the very real clashes between profit drivers and ethics in the pharmaceutical industry.

• Media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s 21^st Century Fox has launched another bid to take full control of Sky. Fox already owns 39% of Sky, but its last bid to take full control of the commercial broadcaster was derailed amid a hugely negative response to the phone hacking scandal at Murdoch’s now-defunct newspaper, The News of the World. The move has been criticised by those concerned about the plurality of UK media, while Sky has also been accused of selling itself off to its dominant shareholder on the cheap.
• Things are going less well for Yahoo, which has admitted that a billion of its user accounts may have been affected by a hacking attack in 2013.
• Ongoing industrial action has brought the Southern Rail franchise to a standstill, as the government sits back in the hope that the dispute will break remaining transport trade unions and pave the way for full automisation of the railways without the need to offer expensive retraining or alternative jobs to rail workers. Meanwhile, another transport dispute has emerged, as 2,000 cabin crew at British Airways have voted to strike over pay. 
• In the pharmaceutical sector, Pfizer and Flynn Pharma have received a record fine for overcharging the NHS for anti-epilepsy drugs. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) lambasted the companies for hiking the price of epilepsy medication by £2,600% overnight.
• And Pfizer and Flynn Pharma aren’t the only pharmaceutical firms to be criticised by the CMA recently; Actavis has also been accused of hiking the price of lifesaving drug hydrocortisone, which treats various health problems, by 12,000%.

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