LONDON (Reuters) – British luxury group Burberry (BRBY.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) calmed fears about slowing demand in China with better-than-expected fourth quarter results as it sold more of its most expensive items.

Burberry said demand from affluent Asian customers for its more expensive handbags and coats helped boost sales. It said “aspirational” shoppers were spending less, but its most affluent customers were spending more and its staff were helping to push more expensive items.

April 4 (Reuters) – Restructuring specialist Hilco could
seal a 50 million pound ($76 million) deal to rescue Britain’s
most high profile entertainment retailer HMV as early as
this Friday, a source familiar with the deal told Reuters.

Hilco is expected to acquire around 130 HMV stores and all
nine cut-price Fopp branded outlets in a deal that could save
2,500 jobs. It has long been the favourite to take HMV out of
administration after the firm bought up its debt in January.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s squeezed high street will receive a much-needed boost on Thursday when camera specialist Jessops is brought back to life by a well-known entrepreneur less than three months after its collapse.

Peter Jones, whose investments span the food, entertainment and media sectors, will reopen six Jessops stores this week, with up to 30 more opening next month.

LONDON, March 28 (Reuters) – Britain’s squeezed high street
will receive a much-needed boost on Thursday when camera
specialist Jessops is brought back to life by a well-known
entrepreneur less than three months after its collapse.

Peter Jones, whose investments span the food, entertainment
and media sectors, will reopen six Jessops stores this week,
with up to 30 more opening next month.

LONDON, March 27 (Reuters) – Merlin Entertainments Group,
the private-equity backed owner of Madame Tussauds and Legoland,
is preparing to go public in either London or New York and has
been meeting with potential investors, its chief executive said
on Wednesday.

The world’s second largest visitor attraction operator
behind Walt Disney, had revenue of over one billion
pounds for the year to Dec. 29 2012, and was valued at 2.25
billion pounds ($3.41 billion) in 2010 when private equity firm
CVC Capital Partners bought a stake.

LONDON (Reuters) – A British security firm that transports cash for Cypriot banks is working round the clock, sending teams out with police protection to stock bank machines and readying guards for when banks reopen on Thursday.

The world’s largest security firm, G4S, moves cash and will provide guards for Cypriot lenders including Bank of Cyprus and Cyprus Popular Bank, the two biggest, which are to be combined and see large depositors’ accounts frozen under a bailout agreed at the weekend.

LONDON (Reuters) – Chancellor George Osborne scrapped the above-inflation beer tax rises on Wednesday and cut one pence off a pint, cheering drinkers and providing some relief for a pub sector still enduring 18 closures a week.

The much criticised beer duty escalator, put in place to push the levy up by 2 percent on top of inflation every year until 2015, has seen the tax on beer grow 42 percent since the previous Labour government introduced it in 2008.

LONDON, March 20 (Reuters) – Britain’s finance minister
George Osborne scrapped the country’s above-inflation beer tax
rises on Wednesday and cut one pence off a pint, cheering
drinkers and providing some relief for a pub sector still
enduring 18 closures a week.

The much criticised beer duty escalator, put in place to
push the levy up by 2 percent on top of inflation every year
until 2015, has seen the tax on beer grow 42 percent since the
previous Labour government introduced it in 2008.

LONDON, March 20 (Reuters) – British online fashion retailer
ASOS posted a 37 percent rise in second quarter sales,
buoyed by a better than expected home performance and strong
overseas growth.

ASOS, whose celebrity fans include United States First Lady
Michelle Obama, said on Wednesday retail sales had risen to 186
million pounds ($281 million) in the three months to Feb. 28.

LONDON, March 14 (Reuters) – Home Retail, Britain’s
biggest household goods retailer, posted a sales surge at Argos
and upgraded its annual profit forecast for the second time in
2013, sending its shares soaring.

The group, which in January raised its full year profit
forecast by 10 million pounds to 83 million, said it now expects
pretax profit to be around 90 million pounds ($134 million)
after fourth-quarter underlying sales at Argos rose 5.2 percent.