Business Diary: 10/04/2010

The retailer hoping to be his lordship?

Is Sir Stuart Rose after a peerage? Three months ago, the M&S boss appeared on BBC 1's Question Time and refused to be drawn into any debate with a whiff of controversy. Now he's quitting M&S, he's front and centre in the business campaign backing the Tories.

No time for miners to enjoy a chocolate egg

American miner Peabody didn't get a warm welcome as it gatecrashed the deal Australian commodities trader Noble thought it had to buy its compatriot Macarthur. "The Americans charged into town on a Gulfstream jet for the afternoon," Noble told the stock exchange in an unusually frank statement. "Hats off to them for being opportunistic and crafty: it ruined our Easter."

Michael, we have a puncture to fix

For those of a certain age, Kwik-Fit's new ad campaign will be a happy trip down memory lane. It stars KITT, the talking Pontiac from the 1980s TV show Knight Rider. Kwik-Fit has even recruited William Daniels, the original voice of KITT.

How the Liberal Democrats sell sex

A curious marketing trick from Ann Summers, the retailer that brings the sex industry to the high street. It has bought up the phrase "Lib Dems" on Google. Search under that term and you'll find a link to Ann Summers: "We specialise in long, hard elections," it says.

Don't they feed them at The Guardian?

Just how hard are times are at Guardian News & Media, which managed to lose £90m last year? An offer of vouchers for free meals at a branch of Nando's set to open round the corner from the paper group's King's Cross HQ was oversubscribed within 20 minutes this week. Those journalists are obviously hungry folk.

Number of the day: 13m

The number of iPads that analysts reckon Apple will manage to shift before the end of 2011.