Sweet dreams: dessert parlours help to revive UK’s high streets

Dessert cafes and ice-cream parlours are hoping to play a role in a revival of UK high streets and the night-time economy, as people seek an alternative to going to the pub or an expensive meal out.Their number has soared by almost 700 in the UK in the past decade, according to analysts at Green Street, formerly the Local Data Company, with outlets in places from Aberdeen to Plymouth.The market is thought to be worth more than £500m, including several national chains as well as much-loved independents from The Pudding Stop in St Albans to Cloud 9 in Brighton.“It’s a nice chit-chat place,” says Ria, 24, emerging from a lunchtime stop at a London outpost of one of the UK’s biggest chains, Creams, with two friends. “Especially if you are craving something sweet

Hubris, crisis and scandal: how the NatWest ‘soap opera’ unfolded

Hours before the government fired the starting gun on what became a £45bn bailout of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in October 2008, Whitehall was in chaos. Dozens of City bankers, drafted in to support the chancellor, Alistair Darling, were camped along the Treasury building’s winding corridors, juggling laptops and mobile phones as they worked to keep the UK’s financial system afloat.“It looked a little bit like an under-stress NHS hospital,” Charles Randell, the government’s former legal adviser, recalls.And time was running out. The Labour government, then led by Gordon Brown, had begrudgingly nationalised Northern Rock a year earlier and watched in horror months later as a string of US banks, including Lehman Brothers, went under

Government sells final shares in NatWest 17 years after £45bn bailout

The UK has sold its final shares in NatWest Group, ending 17 years of state ownership since the £45bn taxpayer bailout that saved the bank from collapse at the height of the 2008 financial crisis.The full privatisation of NatWest is a symbolic moment for the banking group – formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) – and draws a line under the most tumultuous chapter in its near 300-year history.However, it comes at a £10bn loss to the taxpayer, with the state having only recouped about £35bn of its costs, because its shares have long languished below the average 502p level paid in the bailout.That compares with the £900m profit recouped from the sale of shares in Lloyds Banking Group, which was privatised in 2017, nine years after receiving £20.3bn in state aid for rescuing HBOS during the banking crash

Trump says China ‘totally violated’ tariff truce after US warns trade talks have ‘stalled’ – as it happened

Donald Trump has accused China of breaking the tariff truce the two nations agreed in Geneva just a few weeks ago.Both countries had agreed to temporarily pause their escalating tariffs, which at one point hit 145%.The president wrote on his social media platform Truth Social:I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn’t want to see that happen. Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized and China got back to business as usual. Everybody was happy! That is the good news!!! The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US

Sir Bob Reid obituary

In the spring of 1990, the chief executive’s office at British Rail received an urgent telephone call from the area manager at Newcastle upon Tyne saying there was a one-armed Scotsman wandering around the main signal box claiming to be BR’s new chairman and wanting to know how everything worked. Was it all right to tell him?The man was Bob Reid, who had recently moved from Shell, where he was the UK chairman, and was now on the brink of a difficult five-year stint at BR that would end in a privatisation about which he had serious misgivings. His foray into the signal box, matched by an excursion into the drivers’ restroom at Waterloo, was typical of the man. Determined, impulsive and impatient to get things moving, he had a liking for human contact and an easy manner, regardless of rank.The offer to take over BR had come in 1990

Burberry pays new boss almost £2.6m in nine months while axing jobs

Burberry has paid its new chief executive, Joshua Schulman, almost £2.6m in his first nine months in the job, including £380,000 in house moving costs, as the ailing British brand announced hundreds of job cuts.The company also gave its former boss Jonathan Akeroyd a payoff worth about £1.5m – a year’s notice including salary, pension and cash benefits – after he exited the company in July last year, according to the group’s annual report. The former Versace boss left less than three years after he was appointed in 2021