The chief executive of Southern Cross will not pocket his pay-off of £430,000 when he steps down from the beleaguered care homes operator once its restructuring is "well advanced" towards the end of the autumn.

Growth in video games and in Brazil helped the telecoms and entertainment giant Vivendi post first-half profits in line with expectations yesterday, despite weakness in its key French telecoms business.

Health and sports club operator David Lloyd Leisure is to spend £2.5m expanding its chain of sites aimed specifically at children.

The so-called "beer tie" operated by a number of Britain's largest pub chains is forcing pubs out of business all over the country and must be regulated more closely, a leading think-tank warned today.

Punch Taverns and Spirit Pub Group will update the market on Thursday, for the first time as separate entities since their split earlier this summer.

Train drivers who went on strike in a row over pay are to be balloted on an offer worth 5%, it was announced today.

The struggling owner of the nightclub chains Liquid and Oceana yesterday warned that the riots earlier this month had had a material impact on trading.

The two-week long strike at Verizon Communications is set to end this week after the unions and the US telecoms group reached an agreement to restart negotiations. Around 45,000 workers are expected to start going back to work, with some resuming late shifts today, and the remainder following suit tomorrow. The weekend pact will see Verizon extend the old contract terms indefinitely while it talks to the unions about changes.

American card players are hardly a high priority for humanitarian organisations protecting the rights of the world's imperilled communities. But such is the current plight of professional poker players in the United States, where online poker has been all but illegal since April, that a new service launched last week offering to relocate beleaguered card players to "poker-friendly countries" around the world.

The Competition Commission should investigate the market for cement, ready-mix concrete and aggregates such as rocks, sand and gravel, the Office of Fair Trading said yesterday.

A group of guinea-pig festival-goers at the recent Isle of Wight festival saved themselves from long queues for the beer and masses of food that are generally consumed at a weekend-long festival.

The man who pays his way

The head of Thomas Cook's UKdivision has departed after 11 years at the troubled tour operator, just a week after its group chief executive Manny Fontenla-Novoa quit.

Sportingbet; French Connection