The Financial Report is a 30-second bulletin broadcast five times a day from Monday to Friday.
It features the major movements in share prices and in the benchmark international stock market indexes, together with foreign exchange news and rates.
The sponsorship overcomes regulations laid down by the Independent Television Commission, which prohibit the sponsorship of news items, because the bulletin just features the figures on screen without any voiceovers.
As part of the deal The Business has ten-second opening and five-second closing credits around each bulletin. The idents were created in-house by Sky and feature a business worker in a virtual reality environment, calling up the latest business information via a central interactive database.
The deal was negotiated by Sponsorcom on behalf of The Business and by Sky's sponsorship team, on behalf of Sky.
The Financial Report was previously sponsored by Sharepeople.com. Sky News has since been revamped with a remodelled studio and an updated logo.
In the latest newspaper ABCs for December, The Business bucked the trend of the Sunday broadsheet market by recording a 4.05% increase in sales month-on-month, to 94,381. This month the cover price has increased from 50p to 60p and there are reports of a possible launch in the US. The paper lost around £30m between 1998 and October 2001. In 2001 it was renamed as The Business from Sunday Business, axed 47 journalist jobs and outsourced some production functions to the Press Association.
Paul Woolfenden, managing director of The Business said: "The bulletins are seen by ABC1 viewers throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa and provide an ideal vehicle for us to reach our target audience - upmarket, affluent and financially aware."
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