Category: 3. Business

Harrods is facing legal action over its addition of a £1-a-head cover charge to diners’ bills that does not go to workers, in a test case that could lead to changes at a string of upmarket restaurants.

Legislation, which came into force in October 2024, requires business owners to hand over all tips and service charges to staff. Some restaurants, including those at Harrods, add a mandatory cover charge as well as an optional service charge and only pass on the latter to their workers.

An employment tribunal case involving 29 Harrods restaurant workers backed by the United Voices of the World (UVW) union is to be heard in September. Workers argue that the cover charge functions in practice as a service charge and so should be distributed to them and not kept by Harrods.

It is the first legal challenge in the UK to test what qualifies as a tip under the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023. Under the legislation, restaurants, cafes and hotels must ensure all tips, gratuities and service charges paid by customers are allocated fairly to workers in that place of work.

Harrods, which employs more than 330 people in its dining establishments, hands the 12.5% optional service charge to workers but not the compulsory £1-a-head cover charge, which was introduced at all the luxury department store’s restaurants and cafes in London before the law changed.

Other restaurants to levy a cover charge include the Ivy, the Delaunay and the Wolseley in central London.

Workers say Harrods’ restaurant managers have discretion to remove the cover charge on request, so that it functions like a tip. Harrods denies this.

Alice Howick, a former Harrods waiter and one of the claimants, said: “Harrods introduced this cover charge out of nowhere and without any transparency as to its purpose.

“Whilst the cover charge still exists, it should be going towards the staff who prepare and serve the food and drinks, the quality of which guarantees that customers walk through the door and Harrods makes as much money as it does.”

Petros Elia, the general secretary of UVW, said: “If Harrods has introduced a new charge that walks and talks like a service charge, then it should be treated like one, and paid fairly and transparently to waiters and chefs. Instead, we are once again seeing what can only be described as Scrooge behaviour from a company that can more than afford to do the right thing.”

The case is the latest dispute over pay and conditions at Harrods eateries, which included a strike in 2024.

Harrods said its compulsory cover charge was “in line with other high-demand luxury dining destinations” and “entirely separate to the discretionary 12.5% service charge”.

It added that it had paid all of the service charge directly to staff since January 2022, more than two years before the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act came into force. The service charge is calculated on the bill including the cover charge, so staff receive a 12.5% share of the cover charge.

A spokesperson said: “Harrods’ approach to pay within our restaurant division is informed by ongoing, collaborative and direct dialogue with colleagues.”

The company provides details of the cover charge and service charge in policy documents and said UVW was not a recognised union by Harrods and had not played a direct role in the development of its policies.

“We will continue to engage directly with our colleagues on all issues related to pay and benefits, to ensure they remain industry-leading and guided by our values and colleague commitments,” the Harrods spokesperson said.

The issue emerged as Harrods faced claims from 180 survivors of alleged abuse by its former owner Mohamed Al Fayed via its compensation scheme. The department store set up the scheme after dozens of women came forward with allegations of abuse by the late entrepreneur going back as far as 1977.

Harrods said this month it had already paid out compensation to more than 50 women. The scheme, which was opened last March, will close to new submissions on 31 March.

A new drug for advanced prostate cancer has shown promise in early trials experts have said, with the medication shrinking tumours in some patients.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in many countries, including the US and UK. About 1.5 million men are diagnosed worldwide each year.

The new drug has caused excitement as it is a type of treatment called immunotherapy. This approach uses the body’s own immune system to fight disease, and has already proved beneficial for some cancers. However, experts note it has not yet had the same impact on prostate cancer.

Now scientists have reported results from an early stage trial of an immunotherapy drug called VIR-5500, suggesting it could offer hope to men with advanced prostate cancer.

“We believe that such treatments may in the long term lead to cures,” said Prof Johann de Bono of the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden NHS foundation trust, who led the work.

De Bono said VIR-5500was an engineered antibody that brought together the body’s killer T-cells with tumour cells trying to evade them. This type of drug, called a T-cell engager, allowed the killer cells to wipe out the tumour ones.

The special feature of VIR-5500, De Bono added, was that it was designed to only become activated within the tumour. This not only minimised side-effects – an important consideration as other T-cell engagers have been found to trigger severe inflammatory responses in patients with prostate cancer – but allowed the drug to linger in the bloodstream, meaning fewer doses may be needed.

Under the phase one clinical trial, funded by Vir Biotechnology, 58 men with advanced prostate cancer, and who had stopped responding to other treatments, were given VIR-5500.

The researchers found the majority of patients – 88% – experienced only very mild side-effects.

They then looked at the level of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in the men’s blood – a biomarker whereby higher levels can be a sign of prostate conditions.

De Bono noted the trial started at low doses, with the dose increasing in stages. When the team looked at data for 17 men given the highest dose, they found that for 14 (82%) their PSA level fell by at least half after treatment, nine (53%) saw their PSA level fall by at least 90%, and five (29%) experienced a fall of at least 99%.

De Bono described the results as unprecedented for a disease previously thought to be “immune-cold” – in other words resistant to immunotherapy.

The team added that, of 11 patients given the highest dose and whose tumours were measurable, five showed tumour shrinkage. In one case, involving a 63-year-old man whose cancer had spread to his liver, the team found 14 cancerous liver lesions “completely resolved” after six cycles of treatment.

The results, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology genitourinary cancers symposium in San Francisco.

De Bono said further clinical trials are now being planned. “We do need more data but the results are stunning,” he said.

Charlotte Bevan, professor of cancer biology at Imperial College London, who was not involved in the work, said an advance in using immunotherapy for prostate cancer was potentially very exciting, opening up a new class of drug. But, she added, it was important studies were carried out with patients of different ethnicities, as there were disparities in prostate cancer outcomes.

Simon Grieveson, assistant director of research at Prostate Cancer UK, described the early-phase trial as exciting.

“With over 12,000 men dying from prostate cancer each year in the UK, we urgently need new and innovative ways to treat the disease,” he said.

“These early results are extremely promising, with a number of men on the study responding positively to the treatment with minimal side effects. I look forward to seeing this now tested in larger trials, with the hope that this treatment will offer men more valuable time with their loved ones.”

I’m in an investing WhatsApp group with about 100 other punters, awaiting financial advice from Sebastian Hatherleigh. In pictures, Hatherleigh is about 60, bespectacled, and looks dapper in a navy suit and vermilion tie. He describes himself as a senior strategic adviser at a “global investment and asset management firm”.

He is, in truth, nothing of the sort. In fact, he’s nothing of any sort. Despite his substantial online presence — social media accounts, press releases, quotes in online publications — Sebastian Hatherleigh doesn’t appear to exist at all.

There is no digital record of him before 2025, his images seem AI-generated, and there is nothing to back up his claims that he studied at Columbia or worked at McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, or as a faculty member at Wharton business school — the last two confirming to me that he’d never been employed there. When I contacted him on Facebook, his account — registered in Nepal — was deleted.

But Hatherleigh is part of a network stretching across borders and over platforms — an elaborate ecosystem of computer-generated or stolen photos, fake accounts on social media platforms, and press releases laundered through small press agencies.

It’s a level of intricate “world-building” that novelist George RR Martin would be proud of.

“This can only be done by organised crime gangs, organisations with the size and structure of major international businesses,” says Simon Miller, director of communications at fraud prevention service Cifas.

Why criminals are going to such lengths is obvious. “If you’re looking [to target] people with substantial savings who can make multiple deposits, by definition they’re likely to be more savvy, so the scam has to be contextualised with more data,” he says.

But how these scams are carried out relies on the rising availability of generative AI technology, and a series of failings from social media platforms and online publishing groups.

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At first glance, the WhatsApp group seems harmless. Most online investment scams involve pushy agents asking users to hand over cash. By contrast, this involves “an expert” who posts information about market moves, while an “assistant” points members to certain stocks.

“Essentially it starts off seeming legitimate, and that’s where people get caught out,” says Richard Berry, founder of the Good Money Guide. “They’re not asking for money and they’re not generally referring to a broker [who provides a payout for each customer recommended].”

Instead of cashing out directly from customers, he says, these groups make money by winning trust. Any number of parallel Google searches or AI queries, “just to check”, will result in a stream of legitimate-seeming impressions.

Then, when the time is right, they will start pushing investors towards illiquid small-cap companies, stocks which the groups already own.

“There might be 100 or 1,000 different groups all pushing this particular stock — even a small amount of buying will push it up,” says Berry. “Then consumers see the stock going up, they buy it more, and it becomes a perpetual motion machine.”

When the stock is high enough, the organisers simply sell into the market, leaving consumers high and dry. It is a tech-enabled rendering of a much older racket: the “pump-and-dump” scam.

But getting to that point is a long road, which begins with social media ads. Though Facebook has come under particular scrutiny for hosting scam ads, I found the link to the Hatherleigh investment group through TikTok.

“Criminals use online platforms to pay for adverts and content to help make their scams seem legitimate,” says Alex Robinson, head of fraud prevention at TSB.

While high-profile celebrities, including consumer champion Martin Lewis, have been common targets, Miller warns there is an increasing shift to scammers masquerading as members of the financial services industry.

In Hatherleigh’s case, the first ad I saw that led to him featured the name and likeness of veteran fund manager Terry Smith. Several ads for Hatherleigh’s services aimed at French speakers featured the logo of Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest. There is no suggestion that either are involved with Hatherleigh (neither responded to requests for comment).

In total, there were 558 ads posted by the campaign on TikTok last September, mostly targeting the UK and Switzerland. Though TikTok does not provide data on how many users clicked through on each ad, the most popular was seen by more than 150,000 people.

Tiktok removed them late last year. The company said the ads breached its advertising policy on misleading and fake content. It added that, in just the second quarter of 2025, it had removed more than 5.7mn ads that violated its policies.

But it is a game of whack-a-mole — similar ads linked to fake personas are still being served up in 2026.

TikTok’s ad library shows the ads came from Xiamen Younan Yigou E-commerce Co Ltd, a Chinese company, with the marketing campaign run by Hong Kong-based MarketLogic Technology. Marketlogic did not respond to requests for comment; similar requests sent to a Facebook page linked to Xiamen Younan went unanswered, as did a letter sent to its registered address.

But the network extends further, both beyond these companies and TikTok.

When I copied and pasted the text from a disclaimer on a site linked to the company that supposedly employs Hatherleigh, I found 40 financial advisory companies using the same language, all of which seem to have been created in 2025.

The techniques they use show a high level of sophistication in creating fake identities for experts and realistic-looking discussions about their companies — probably the work of professional criminals, says Brian Dilley, an economic crime prevention consultant and former group director of economic crime prevention at Lloyds Banking Group.

“There are people who specialise in creating a synthetic identity, selling packages of things that give you a presence on the internet,” he says. “Everything is crime as a service.”

Perhaps the most ubiquitous tool in this spider’s web of scam websites is the press release. These are pumped out via news wires and press agencies across the scammers’ own websites and across a host of local news sites, LinkedIn accounts and even podcasts.

For real businesses, the value of such websites is limited, says Andrew Bloch, a communications executive who has been the official spokesperson and PR adviser to Lord Alan Sugar for more than two decades.

“There’s nothing illegal or immoral about it, but in my personal opinion it’s a bit of a waste of time — it’s rather like throwing mud at a wall and seeing what sticks,” he says. “Some of these sites have negligible audiences.”

But they are ideal for creating hundreds of syndicated media appearances for a one-off payment, instantly creating a realistic-looking profile with stories of product launches, conferences and new hires.

“The editorial standards on some of these sites are what I would call ‘low or no’,” says Bloch. One example is Grand Newswire, which claims to be based in Delaware.

Between advertisements for car replacement services, AI water purifiers and various exhibitions around the world, Grand Newswire has published press releases from financial services companies run by individuals who have left no trace of their existence beyond self-published content and nearly identical websites. It boasts that it costs just $15 to get exposure on more than 200 news sites. Grand Newswire did not respond to requests for comment.

Another example is Digital Journal, a Canadian company founded in 1998, which has published content from a range of questionable experts. Digital Journal is more expensive: sponsored content rates start at £274. Though it states that it does not allow “overly promotional language”, this seems open to interpretation. An article featuring Hatherleigh that was syndicated from Grand Newswire breathlessly reports on a new research division which offers “internal excellence”. Digital Journal did not respond to requests for comment.

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In other cases, scammers have turned to social media manipulation. The Facebook page for Hatherleigh pumps out market briefings on a regular basis, while fellow expert Dr Rowan Penfield, who also leaves no online trace beyond his self-published content, asks visitors if they are “Tired of NOT being a crypto billionaire yet?”

I have found at least three Reddit forums run by accounts whose sole purpose is to launder the reputation of investment fraudsters, constantly posting about dubious investment sites that are part of the same network. Meanwhile on Quora, accounts posing as financial services professionals began posting about these exchanges earlier last year.

“It’s like an onion,” says Jonathan Gilbert, a lecturer at the University of the West of England Bristol, who focuses on financial crime and criminal justice. “It can be . . . one type of fraud, but involve other variants.”

Use of AI images is rife within these scams. One of the subreddits (topic-focused communities) mentioned above includes a post promoting an expert, Arvin Roberts, describing him as “a distinguished entrepreneur, standing confidently in front of a grand neoclassical building”. But there’s no evidence outside his self-published content to show he actually exists, and he changes race between the two accompanying images. Almost all of the posts in the subreddit were calling out Roberts as a scammer and the community had very low engagement and upvotes (which directly affect the visibility of content). Reddit declined to comment and Quora did not respond to requests for comment.

Perhaps more concerning is that information manipulation is increasingly assimilated into large language models — an echo of the so-called “LLM grooming” used by pro-Russian sources to attempt to shape opinions of the invasion of Ukraine. Essentially, by flooding the information space with slop (much of which appears to be AI-generated), it is possible to “convince” AI chatbots that the information is reputable.

When I tested different LLMs’ ability to see through the “Hatherleigh” scam network, results varied significantly. Meta’s AI drew unquestioningly on the fake back stories and press releases; even when prompted again, it stated that Hatherleigh was a legitimate source. ChatGPT, by contrast, recognised red flags when asked follow up questions. Google’s Gemini displayed suspicion from the first prompt. Chinese LLM DeepSeek did not identify the scams, instead simply hallucinating fictional movie characters when asked about the fake investors.

Deepseek and Alphabet did not respond to a request for comment. OpenAI claimed that ChatGPT is used to identify scams up to three times more often than it is used by scammers.

Meta told me that generative AI systems are not always accurate, that LLM manipulation is similar to previous efforts targeting search engines and that the company continues to fight scams.

“There’s an arms race between organisers and preventers of fraud,” says Gilbert. “If anything reduces their ability to victimise, they’ll seek to adapt.”

And AI is the new battleground. For retail investors, the level of sophistication and co-ordination in these “world-building” scams poses major challenges — and is a reflection of the amount of money criminals are prepared to invest in these scam campaigns.

While the ads on TikTok are Chinese, Facebook accounts linked to the fictional experts were administered from countries including Nepal, India and Cambodia. One of the Instagram pages which promotes scams is based in Hong Kong, another in Kazakhstan. An app promoted by one of the sites linked back to a Nigerian computer science graduate, who at first denied a connection, then claimed he had given his account to a friend who had in turn sold it to an Indian or Pakistani scammer. He failed to provide documentation showing this.

That level of international criminal co-operation means more teamwork between public and private sectors is vital, says Mark Tierney, chief executive of cross-industry collaboration Stop Scams UK.

“Combating fraud requires co-ordinated action across government and industry to stay ahead of these evolving threats — including the use of AI as a tool for good, to detect and disrupt harmful activity,” he says.

Miller at Cifas echoes that, calling for “a rapid exchange of information at scale” between financial services companies and the tech platforms where many scams start.

“We need to become far more literate as a society about [how] LLMs can circumvent safeguards — consumers need to have far greater scepticism,” he adds.

Dilley agrees, reflecting that moving towards distrust of anything seen online is, perhaps, not a bad thing.

ISLAMABAD:

The Ministry of Finance released its Monthly Economic Update and Outlook Report, stating that the number of people going abroad for employment has increased by 19 per cent.

According to the report, 75,663 workers registered for overseas employment in January, compared to 63,559 in January last year. The report says economic growth prospects have improved, citing enhanced macroeconomic stability and reduced inflationary pressures.

The Ministry of Finance also stated that a Rs38 billion Ramazan relief package was provided to the public. Inflation is expected to remain between 6 and 7 per cent this month. In January 2026, the inflation rate was recorded at 5.8 per cent.

However, geopolitical uncertainty and fluctuations in global commodity prices have been identified as potential risks. It said the balance between government revenues and expenditures has improved. The current account deficit remains under control, and the rupee has stayed stable.

IT exports increased, and access to cheaper financing has eased business activity. Large-scale manufacturing recorded a 4.8 per cent improvement over the past six months.

During the first seven months of the fiscal year, remittances increased by 11.3 per cent, reaching $23.2 billion from July to January. During the same period, exports declined by 5.5 per cent to $8.3 billion.