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- 📈 Boohoo’s Big Makeover: Now Debenhams Group!
📈 Boohoo’s Big Makeover: Now Debenhams Group!
North Korea’s £1.5bn Crypto Vanishing Act
This is Cliff Equity, the UK’s business newsletter that keeps you informed on what’s important in tech, business and finance in less than 5 minutes
In today’s stories:
Boohoo’s Big Makeover: Now Debenhams Group!
North Korea’s £1.5bn Crypto Vanishing Act
Musk’s Empire Crumbles Under Cyber-attack Chaos
The summary: Boohoo is trading its fast-fashion struggles for a heritage glow-up as Debenhams Group, hoping to revive its fortunes, fend off fierce rivals, and prove that a retail reinvention is always in style.
The details:
Boohoo’s Identity Crisis: The fast-fashion retailer is ditching its name and rebranding as Debenhams Group, four years after rescuing the iconic but ailing department store from administration. A fresh start or just a clever disguise?
A £40m Fashion Faux Pas: Boohoo’s youth-focused brands, including PrettyLittleThing and MAN, have been struggling, forcing the company into heavy discounting and a painful stock writedown. Meanwhile, Debenhams and its associated labels are the comeback kids of the online retail world.
Boardroom Battles & Business Blues: Boohoo’s revenue took a 16% tumble to £1.2bn, while the company fended off an attempted power grab from Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group. A new CFO has stepped in, but can the retailer stitch things back together?
From Pandemic Darling to Fast-Fashion Fumble: Once riding high on lockdown shopping sprees, Boohoo now finds itself squeezed by Chinese rivals Shein and Temu. The big question: will its pivot to Debenhams be the retail renaissance it desperately needs?
Why it matters: Boohoo’s grand makeover into Debenhams Group is a bold attempt to swap its fast-fashion woes for the credibility of a heritage brand—whether customers will buy it (literally and figuratively) is another question. With youth brands floundering, a £40m stock headache, and revenue in freefall, the retailer is betting big on reinvention rather than liquidation. Meanwhile, Mike Ashley’s lurking in the background, fast-fashion titans like Shein and Temu are eating Boohoo’s lunch, and the whole thing feels like a high-stakes wardrobe change—hoping for a glow-up, but risking a fashion disaster.
The summary: North Korea’s cyber-whizzes have turned crypto heists into an art form, swiping billions while investigators scramble to track, freeze, and outwit them in a high-stakes digital thriller—where some exchanges play heroes, others villains, and Pyongyang pockets the loot.
The details:
North Korea’s Digital Bank Heist: The infamous Lazarus Group swiped $1.5bn in crypto from ByBit, with $300m now unrecoverable—an unfortunate windfall for Pyongyang’s military piggy bank.
Crypto Cat-and-Mouse: Investigators are racing against a team of round-the-clock money launderers, using sophisticated tactics to blur the digital paper trail.
Bounty Hunters Assemble: ByBit has launched a Lazarus Bounty programme, rewarding sleuths who track and freeze stolen funds—$4m paid out so far, but billions still at large.
Regulators vs. Rogues: Some crypto exchanges help block stolen funds, others (looking at you, eXch) are more... laissez-faire, making laundering worryingly easy for the world's most cyber-savvy criminals.
Why it matters: When a rogue nation funds its nuclear ambitions by looting digital vaults, it’s more than just a hacker headache—it’s a global security nightmare. The cat-and-mouse game between cybercriminals and investigators shows just how vulnerable the crypto world remains, with some exchanges turning a blind eye faster than you can say “plausible deniability.” If nothing changes, expect more digital daylight robberies, with North Korea laughing all the way to the blockchain.
The summary: Elon Musk’s week has been a whirlwind of cyber-attack claims, SpaceX explosions, and Tesla protests, all adding up to a rather bumpy ride for the world’s richest, yet increasingly beleaguered, tech mogul.
The details:
X Marks the Spot… of Another Outage – Musk claims a “massive cyber-attack” took down X (formerly Twitter), blaming a mysterious “large, coordinated group and/or a country.” No proof, just vibes.
Reload and Hope for the Best – Users were left staring at error messages while outage reports surged, especially on mobile. Conveniently, Musk blames Ukraine, despite offering no evidence.
Musk vs. The World – From SpaceX rockets exploding to Tesla dealerships being vandalised, Musk’s empire is having a rough week. Meanwhile, his comments on Ukraine aren’t exactly winning him friends.
Trump, Tesla & Turmoil – Musk’s meeting with Trump reportedly ended with the former president considering curbing his influence over government staff. Meanwhile, Tesla stock is plummeting, and even die-hard fans are selling their cars.
Why it matters: Musk's latest claims of a cyber-attack are just the cherry on top of a week full of public meltdowns across his empire, from exploding rockets to crumbling Tesla sales. His escalating spats with Ukraine and Trump suggest he's becoming a magnet for controversy, leaving both his businesses and reputation in freefall. Meanwhile, as his social platform implodes, Musk’s carefully curated image as the all-powerful tech mogul is starting to look a little more fragile than it once did.
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