Sugar's Amstrad profits down

Alan Sugar’s electronics group Amstrad posted falling profits today as the entrepreneur prepared for the launch of the second series of The Apprentice.

Amstrad blamed lower sales of its high value Sky Plus set-top boxes for the 12% fall in profits to £12.5m (€18.3m) for the six months to New Year’s Eve.

It came on the day that Mr Sugar – former chairman of Tottenham Hotspur - returned to the UK’s TV screens with the BBC show in which he gets to fire business hopefuls competing to become his apprentice.