Business

The upmarket fashion retailer LK Bennett is on the brink of collapse for the second time in six years after filing an application to appoint administrators. Court filings show the business submitted papers to the High Court on Tuesday, signalling that efforts to secure fresh funding or a buyer may have failed. The move puts around 280 jobs at risk across the group. Founded in 1990 by Linda Bennett, LK Bennett became synonymous with polished British...

The UK motor finance arm of Mercedes-Benz has plunged into a £365 million loss after setting aside hundreds of millions of pounds to cover potential compensation linked to the mis-selling of car loans. Accounts filed for Mercedes-Benz Financial Services UK, based in Milton Keynes, show the business swung to a £364.6 million loss in 2024, compared with a £69.6 million profit the previous year, after booking additional charges related to improperly disclosed commission arrangements. The...

UK ministers are facing renewed pressure to tighten restrictions on gambling advertising, after new polling revealed strong public support for a far tougher approach to promotions and sponsorship. Gambling regulation has been the subject of increasingly heated debate in recent years, with governments introducing tighter controls on online slots, higher industry taxes and a statutory levy to fund addiction treatment. However, advertising rules have remained largely untouched, despite the scale of promotional activity rising sharply...

As 2026 approaches, more and more cryptocurrency users are no longer waiting for price surges, but instead turning to models that offer visible daily returns. At CryptoMiningFirm, multi-currency cloud mining is now running at scale. By running BTC, XRP, ETH, and DOGE simultaneously, some active high-hashrate contracts can generate up to $9,000 worth of real profits in BTC, XRP, ETH, DOGE, and other cryptocurrencies daily. These are not projections or market assumptions — they are...

Britain’s broadcasting regulator is under mounting pressure to investigate a GB News interview with Donald Trump, after critics claimed the channel failed to challenge a series of misleading and inaccurate assertions made by the US president. The interview, aired in November and billed by GB News as a “world exclusive sit-down”, featured Trump repeating long-disputed claims that human-induced climate change is “a hoax”, alongside assertions that London contains police “no-go areas” governed by “sharia law”....

A lack of commercial understanding inside government is making it harder for companies to operate and is actively holding back economic growth, according to the boss of Iceland. Richard Walker, executive chairman of the frozen food retailer and a newly appointed Labour peer, has warned that too many politicians fail to grasp how businesses actually function — particularly those operating on tight margins and employing thousands of people across the country. “I’ve met a lot...

ITV has agreed to invest up to £3 million in Joe Wicks’s health and fitness platform The Body Coach, deepening the broadcaster’s push into digital consumer brands. The deal has been struck through ITV’s AdVentures Invest fund and will see The Body Coach advertise across ITV’s linear channels and its streaming platform ITVX, giving the app access to one of the UK’s largest broadcast audiences. Wicks launched The Body Coach app in late 2020, building...

The world’s richest individuals accumulated a record $2.2 trillion (£1.7 trillion) in additional wealth during 2025, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with just eight billionaires accounting for around a quarter of the gains. The surge pushed the combined net worth of the world’s 500 wealthiest people to $11.9 trillion, fuelled by booming equity markets, a rally in cryptocurrencies and metals, and renewed investor optimism following Donald Trump’s election victory in 2024. While wealth creation...

One pub a day closed permanently across England and Wales during 2025, underlining the mounting pressure facing Britain’s hospitality sector as rising costs continue to bite. Analysis of government data shows that 366 pubs were either demolished or converted for alternative uses in the year to December, equating to an average of one irreversible closure every 24 hours. The figures, analysed by property tax specialists Ryan, show the total number of pubs in England and...

As a sustainable business owner, I’ve always believed that every choice we make, from the suppliers we trust to the packaging that carries our products, reflects our values. But the conversation around packaging sustainability is evolving quickly, and 2025 is shaping up to be a defining year for anyone in this space. The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will soon change how every business that uses wood or paper packaging operates. Whether you export into the...