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In today's Daily Business briefing cheesecakes, video games and the nighttime economy are on Miri Thomas and Simon Keegan's news agenda.

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00:00Coming up in today's Daily Business Briefing, Cheesecakes, Video Games and the Nighttime Economy.

00:11Hello, I'm Mary Thomas. And I'm Simon Keegan.

00:14And the story that I saw this morning that was of interest to me is about the Deals News piece, actually, Simon.

00:21It's about Love Cheesecakes. They're based in Lancaster.

00:24Well, I love cheesecake, so tell me more.

00:26They're based in Lancaster and they were featured on Dragon's Den back in 2020.

00:30Now, they've just been acquired by a Bradford-based business.

00:34So, Love Cheesecakes supplies the food service, wholesale and hospitality market.

00:39And they've been bought by Regal Foods. Now, Regal Food Group, based in Bradford, they're super acquisitive as well.

00:45So, they bought Just Desserts Yorkshire in 2022.

00:48And even more recently than that, Love Handmade Cakes.

00:52Mills and Reid advise. So, that's an interesting one.

00:55Interesting to see what they do with their new brand. So, watch out for that one.

00:59Certainly is. What's your go-to cheesecake, Mary?

01:01Oh, I think like a lemon one, potentially.

01:03A lemon one. Nice.

01:04What about you?

01:05It's all about the cheese for me, like a New York cheesecake and like a good solid biscuit base.

01:10Okay.

01:11So, talking of deals, though, one in the Northwest,

01:14Sasha Lord has exited Parklife and the Warehouse Project,

01:18which I think brands fairly synonymous with him going quite a way back.

01:23So, he sold to Live Nation.

01:25And he's going to concentrate on his role as the nighttime economy advisor.

01:31Obviously, he was quite vocal, wasn't he, in lockdown, standing up for the hospitality sector.

01:37And I understand he's also just become a dad as well.

01:41So, that sounds pretty time-consuming as well, I would think.

01:44Yeah, I'm sure. And the other piece I saw, this was from our Birmingham team.

01:50They spotted the financial results for CentreSoft.

01:53Now, CentreSoft are a video games distributor and they distribute all those sort of, you know,

02:00the games that you can play on video consoles and things like that, games consoles.

02:03And they've just announced that their sales have gone up by £90 million in the year ending December 2023.

02:09And their sales are now at around £477 million.

02:13So, I had to look into what they've attributed that growth to.

02:17And it looks like, you know, no surprise, a good handle on costs and overheads and those sort of things.

02:22But it's also relationships with their key partners and retailers, the publishers and the retailers.

02:27But also, I think they benefited from ongoing sales of games consoles in 2023.

02:33So, if sales were strong, more people were buying games.

02:35It sort of raised their fortunes as well.

02:38Yeah, sounds good.

02:39What else are you working on?

02:41Well, I have recently done the first round of our dealmakers judging.

02:46So, what I do is, before we get to the main judging, I got about 30 of the region's top dealmakers.

02:53So, lawyers, accountants, funders, to get some of their views on what kind of a year we've had,

02:59what's been the standout deals, who've been the top dealmakers.

03:03We've already got some amazing entries in, but there is still time to get your entries in.

03:07You've got until the 25th of July.

03:09So, those entries then will go through to my main judging panel.

03:14Other things that we've got in the Northwest, we're doing most exciting workplaces.

03:20Now, this, the deadline for this is today.

03:23So, if you want to, you can email me directly, simon.keegan at newsco.com.

03:28This is any exciting workplace across the Northwest, but it needs to be a recent fitter.

03:35It needs to be in the last year because, obviously, it's an annual thing that we do.

03:39We've also got our first ever ESG champions going in the next issue.

03:45Who are you looking for there?

03:46Well, that can be companies of any size.

03:48It could be, you know, your big international companies, or it could be smaller startups, challengers.

03:56It doesn't have to be on the E side of the ESG.

04:00It doesn't all have to be kind of environmental.

04:02It can be people that's doing good in society as well.

04:05So, it's just individuals or companies?

04:07It's companies.

04:08And so, we're going to profile that.

04:09I think we're going to profile about 30 of these companies.

04:12So, we're looking for suggestions.

04:14Also, in the next issue of the magazine, it's one of the most anticipated features of the year, the rich list.

04:20And I don't think we're going to be in it, are we?

04:23I don't, yeah.

04:24I don't think we can compete with that.

04:25Not this year?

04:26No.

04:27I think we've got something like, there's a few billionaires that top the table there.

04:31There definitely is.

04:32I mean, some of the businesses are typically the owners of things like Home Bargains and B&M and Peel,

04:40some of these big giants that we've got in the Northwest, isn't it?

04:43But we always have a few interesting, unexpected entries in it as well.

04:48So, I'll be interested to see who else cracks the top 10, maybe.

04:53Yeah.

04:54There are some other interesting developments from Insider coming up as well.

04:57So, for all of you who enjoy reading our daily email newsletters, you can now read us on Saturdays and Sundays.

05:05As of this weekend, we will be putting out a new edition, just for the weekend,

05:09where you can access a few longer reads and maybe take things at your leisure.

05:14So, a nice cup of coffee and an Insider newsletter.

05:18And a bit of cheesecake, maybe.

05:19Maybe, maybe.

05:20And then also, you can now submit your news directly to Insider via the Your World portal.

05:26So, there'll be a link to that in the show notes.

05:29If it passes our news team's reviews, we'll then put it on the website and you can then share to your heart's content.

05:37Very good.

05:38So, more from us as well.

05:39Yeah, well, I think that's all we've got time for today.

05:41So, we'll see you Monday.

Watch: Insider's Business Briefing - 19th July

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