The cash and carry giant Booker has snapped up the ailing UK arm of rival Makro for £140m.

Cash and carry giant Booker today moved to snap up struggling rival Makro in a deal expected to add more than a million customers to its books.

Samsung launched its new Galaxy handset yesterday, leading to the kind of queues usually only reserved for a new Apple product.

The high street roared back from the wettest April on record with optimism and the strongest sales growth for more than a year in the first half of May, the CBI said yesterday.

I thought I'd give Embarrassing Bodies a miss last night. "The focus is firmly on faeces this week," ran the Radio Times billing, a rare acknowledgement from a programme-maker that its product is going to be full of crap but still not the most alluring pitch I've ever read.

George Osborne abandoned his plan to impose VAT on the Cornish pasty yesterday. All familiar high street foods, including pasties, sausage rolls, and meat and potato pies, are to be free from the taxman's grasp after a campaign of protest orchestrated by Greggs, the nation's largest chain of high street bakers.

From petrol-fuelled to self-propelled

George Osborne has abandoned his plan to impose VAT on the Cornish pasty. Take-away foods including pasties, sausage rolls and meat-and-potato pies, are to be free from the taxman's grasp after a campaign of protest orchestrated by Greggs, the nation's largest chain of high street bakers.

Every action man needs a sporty timepiece, whether or not he’s doing anything more active than paddling

Greece's once-thriving sex industry has become the latest victim of the country's debt crisis as Greeks spend less on erotic toys, pornography and titillating underwear.

A quarter of Britons would turn a blind eye to buy stolen goods if the price was right, new research shows.

Listed department store chain Beales has hired a former Moss Bros board member as interim finance director as it closes in on a refinancing package.

Go on a tasty trip to Cadbury World in Birmingham, which has joined up with the Ramada Encore to provide overnight breaks for a family of four for £99. The deal includes B&B and tickets for two adults and two kids for the attraction, which tells Cadbury's delicious story.

This mash-up of fiction biography and social history creatively mimics our retail frenzy.