More like Amazon Marketplace. A hub for products sold by multiple shops.

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but it looks like Pret a Manger are opening in the Capitol centre, in what looks like the old Lobster Bob store, ie, kind of opposite KFC's.

I'm not especially a fan of the overpriced pretentious chain, but it is good news nonetheless.

Just A Little Update -

Pret a Manger have now opened their Capitol store which seemed to be relatively busy today! The additions of Tesco, EasyGym & Pret a Manger have at least brought a bit of life to the centre! However upstairs is quite honestly a travesty! Toilets, Gym, Sassoon Hairdressers & Cafe! WOW

Other news, Barkers clothing will be closing in April to make way for the final stage of the coffee shop expansion Such a shame

Woodys is rumoured to be reopening in a small unit close to Pavilion. Apparently the old hairdressers unit?

HMV was a shambles today - Staff unaware whether they are closing or not & the sale was nothing less than pathetic!

The Hayes & The Arcades seemed very vibrant today which was fantastic to see

Sadly, David & Goliath has closed down in the Lower Grand Arcade, however St.Davids have officially announced that Fossil will be opening in the old Henleys/HMV unit.

Surf & Scrum will be opening in the old Baci unit and Mount Fuji will be taking the Martins Chocolatier EastSide unit according to the CSC letting plans

The unit rumoured to be Monki is now available according to the latest letting plans so that may have fallen through?

Finally, the Queen Street/St Davids BHS store has now closed, with posters informing customers of it's alternative stores in the windows! I did notice two old ladies completely stunned by its departure as they attempted to go into the store... I imagine Primark have a lot of work to do on that unit before they open, however I think Primark will bring more to the centre than BHS did & from what I've seen in the Planning Applications, the Primark store will look a lot smarter on the outside, than BHS did which can only be a good thing!

thanks for the update on whats happening in the city. Its nice to see whats going on back home since ive moved away

Good to see that HMV Cardiff will be staying open...the full list of closures has been announced.

When oh when will that Habitat unit be let or subdivided to make it more attractive?

Also, I think something needs to be done about the southern stretch of St Mary's Street, clearly bar uses aren't attractive...

only Wrexham is closing in Wales so far! Good news

Some snippets -

Brighthouse is due to open any day now in the old Blacks unit in St John St.

Positano's Italian restaurant (next to the Owain Glyndwr) has closed down. This was there for many years but before Xmas seemed to have a rebrand to Manhattan Italian American Diner - or perhaps it was bought by new owners. Either way its crashed and burnt already. As an aside is there anyone out there who would prefer Italian American food to just Italian food? And whats the difference anyway?

Next door to Positano's a new eaterie called Italgo is almost ready to open. I think this is take away Italian food which could be genius or a disaster.

It's All Greek To Me - the Greek deli in High St arcade is shut. I would have bet many months salary that this would not last. A big unit with very little stock in it and no customers.

A florist has opened in Castle Arcade in the unit facing the castle and opposite Cafe Minuet.

An art gallery has opened in Morgan Arcade. I've never seen anyone in there but I suppose its one of those businesses where you only need to make one or two sales a day.

Barkers Teahouse in High St arcade is yet to open. They really are taking their time over it - the posters in the window say that it was due to open in Autumn 2012.

A dentist is due to open in the unit on the corner of St Mary St/Wyndham arcade.

Re Italian American restaurants -

It's a very curious concept isn't it? Instead of going for the authentic cuisine you opt for the inauthentic. Is there some sort of twist that the Americans have added that changes things drastically? Do we now need to eat our ethnic food through the prism of America? I suppose the equivalent would be traditional Indian restaurants of the sort that you see in British high streets everywhere (inevitably called Taj Mahal/Jewel of India etc and serving 10 variations of curry with omellette and Chips being the token 'English' dish) opening up in New York. Can I see New Yorkers wanting to eat a version of Indian food that has been bastardized by British tastes?

Its not unlike the concept of an Australian themed bar here in the UK. I haven't been to Australia but one thing that they don't appear to be famous for is their pubs. Whereas we in the UK have erected magnificent temples to beer and have a culture that was founded on the consumption of alcohol in convivial places with a collegiate atmosphere. The Victorian/Edwardian pub with its etched glass, wooden bars, tiled floors, ornate decoration (inside and out) is rightly regarded as being one of our greatest contributions to culture and architecture. And yet the concept of some outback, corrugated tin shack recreated inside modern units in shopping malls and the like seems to have inexplicably gained some traction. I could understand the novelty value when they first appeared some years ago, much in the same way that ostrich burgers were very popular for a short period, but unbelievably they seem to still be around.

It's like exporting the British cafe to Vienna in order to augment their coffee house culture. In some ways I wish we were more French in our attitudes and rejected these inferior foreign alternatives out of hand.

The problem is that even an "Italian" restaurant is inauthentic. Italy, is a whole tapestry of regional and local cuisines, and we tend to get served a mish-mash of different parts of the country in our restaurants. In that sense "Italian American" cuisine isn't that different - it tends to be a mix of different styles from the different parts of Italy the immigrants came from. And there have been some innovations such as as Chicago-style Pizza, the various kinds of "Italian" sandwiches, etc.

Essentially an American Italian restaurant is your typical inauthentic "Italian" together with a few American-developed Italian-style dishes, and a bunch of meat and grill dishes. I don't see any problem with it given the alternative isn't a restaurant serving Neapolitan cuisine, or Tuscan, or Sicillian, etc..

The few indian restaurants I have been to in America share a fair bit in common with those in the UK (although they do have more 'authentic', similar to those you can find in parts of the UK with large South Asian populations) - they even have Tikka Massala which is a dish from Bradford!

Ostriches aren't Australian as far as I know, they're African... and the craze was a good one, as it's pretty healthy meat and creates a lot less pollution and emissions than cattle-raising.

I like the UK's international openess to new trends, especially in food. The US shares this to a significant extent (witness the popularity of Italian, then Mexican and Chinese, and now Vietnamese and slowly growing, Indian). I wouldn't want the stuff food culture of France at all..

I'm afraid you've misunderstood me. I agree that our version of an Italian restaurant is for the most part an amalgam of Italian dishes from different regions tailored to the British taste buds. Isn't any restaurant anywhere that purports to represent a national or regional cuisine?

What I find puzzling is why that bastardized version of a cuisine would be marketed as Italian American in Britain. If there are a number of innovations that the Americans have introduced which change the cuisine in a significant way fair enough but I don't think there are. Would the curry house you ate in in the US market itself as Indian British even though the cuisine has been significantly altered to suit British tastes? Unlikely.

Am I missing something here - if I go to Frankie and Bennies will I be getting something completely different to the multitude of bog standard Italians we already have? Is the usp the fact that Tony Bennet is played as background music instead of Pavarotti? Pictures of New York or Chicago instead of Venice or Rome?

As for ostriches the point I was making is that they were a flash in the pan and a novelty that seems to have died out. What I couldn't understand is why Australian themed bars - which I consider should have been a novelty and a flash in the pan - seem to still be around. I don't know where ostriches come from.

And my final point about rejecting cultural inferiors was specifically related to Australian theme bars. What I can't understand (and this is my personal opinion) is that British pub culture is the greatest in the world and yet a vastly inferior version is imported and seems to be embraced. In that example I think we should adopt the superior attitude of the French and look down on what is (in my opinion) substantially inferior to what we already have.

You've extrapolated that simple proposition to a rejection of outside influences be they culinary or cultural which is not what I was saying. And now I've been forced to defend a whimsical post about me not understanding why Joe Public would favour something called Italian American over just Italian or go to Walkabout or some other similarly themed dive instead of one of the glorious pubs that we have in the UK.

Of course the answer to my puzzlement is that different people like different things which I knew all along and of course I was posing a rhetorical question which you've taken literally. Never mind.

I don't appreciate the exasperated tone in your reply - you raised a set of issues in a not entirely clear way, so don't be surprised if its interpreted in a way that you didn't quite mean.

In Frankie and Benny's yes you will:

http://www.frankieandbennys.com/menu/main

Its basically a menu which is a mix of "Italian" and "American" (with a smattering of those you might call British thrown in the mix too). And a few kind of cross-over dishes. They also make a big deal of cocktails rather than wine.

So yes its a bit of a mish-mash, but does reflect the kind of cuisine you get in quite a few American restaurants. And it isn't just relabelling an "Italian" "American Italian" for coolness points. It is something quite different to both an Italian restaurant and a purely American one.

AFAIK cuisine is not labelled as "British Indian", but simply "Indian". This is because the British-born "Indian" dishes are still recognisably in an Indian style, and do not reflect what is understood to be typical British fayre.

Fair enough. I didn't think I raised a 'set of issues.' I thought I'd given my (admittedly unsolicited) opinion whilst making heavy usage of rhetorical questions. It was motivated by Wizards jokey response to my post re the closure of the Manhattan Italian American place that used to be Positano's. If you misinterpreted it then so be it. No harm done.

Could the difference between an Italian-American and an Italian eatery be that one makes you fat and the other doesn't?

I'm not being entirely facetious. "American" to me suggests ridiculously large portions. Maybe "Italian-American" = "Italian 4 Gluttons"!

If you go to a 'proper' Italian, the portions are massive or 'family-style'.

An Italian American place will serve up large dishes of pizza, pasta also burgers, fries, wings, calzone etc for example frankie and bennys. An Italian restaurant is more of a delicate (maybe more authentic) cuisine - all the classic pasta dishes, made healthily,, where the kitchens tend to lack a deep fat fryer.

Rohan in St Mary St (near the Cottage pub) has shut. According to the sign in the window it doesn't look as though they are opening up elsewhere in Cardiff.

Something called Torre is opening in the unit between Castle Arcade and the Welsh gift shop on Castle Street. I presume it's an eaterie of some sort but don't really know.

Ladbrokes opening on Caroline St.

Also 8-10 High St (used to be the Emporium nightclub many years ago) looks as though it's being converted to student digs. The ground floor unit will be part of the conversion so this will be one less shop/empty unit on High Street.

Another month, another betting shop!

The Echo reports that the Nat West will be vacating their St Mary St branch and concentrating all city centre ops in Queen St. Apparently it's been continuously occupied by a bank since 1880, trivia fans.

Not sure what will go here. Too big for retail and probably not that well configured for offices. Maybe a restaurant/bar? Maybe a hotel? It's a lovely building to be fair.

This could also be an opportunity to build on it's car park which has an entrance on Quay St. At the moment there is a very ugly gap there.

Also Internacionale have closed their unit in the Capitol. No surprise there. Poundland have completed their fit out of the former Barclays Bank on Queen St. In fairness they have not messed around with the exterior and the signage is fairly restrained and respects the building.

That part of St Mary St could start to look quite quiet. Lets hope for imaginative solutions.

What is it with our modern day banks? They seem only too eager to abandon their historical and often grand homes to move into shitty little low ceilinged claustrophobic shoeboxes with Satellite news TV being beamed at the punters from all angles.

They like shitty little claustrophobic offices because it matches their little minds. They don't need to impress anyone because there is nothing to impress with.

It's sad really - the old Bank Manager of old was the pillar of the community - he knew everyone and was able to help both business and private customers enormously.

Break up the Big Four banks into a dozen competing smaller ones, they'd be forced to return to the high street then.

Any news on Weatherspoons in the Bay? Someone is paying the rent on this huge building. I thought it would have been open for Xmas/Easter/....

Yep, it's all been fenced off in the last week and there are men on site

I'm feeling a bit sorry for the people in the deco-style block of flats facing this on the Quay. It'll be like living above the Brewery Quarter - which is fine if you chose it deliberately, but they didn't.

Eden Park in the Morgan Qtr has closed, seems the WRU will be stocking stuff in their Westgate St outlet.

Jantra, stop trying to be clever, it's obviously too much of a struggle for you.

Aren't Barclays, RBS, HSBC and Lloyds's generally recognised as 'The Big Four'?

Mind you, things change so fast nowadays!

Oxfarm Bookshop has recently moved into the Royal Arcade.

....and before we get the inevitable "You forgot about Verde, ner-ner!" comments, that will only have 5% of the market, taking Lloyds down to 25% and Co-op up to 7.5%, as the article "Taking on the 'Big Four' banks is the hardest job on the high street" makes clear.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/apr/06/challenging-big-four-banks

Retail banking is not a loss-leader. At the moment it is, in principle, a rather profitable industry, with pretty wide spreads between what banks pay in interest to savers, and what they charge on loans to borrowers.

Three things are dragging profits down, leading to losses at the likes of LBG:
- legacy mortgages where the spread over base-rate was much lower than today - e.g. baserate + 0.5%.
- PPI compensation (this is the biggest thing)
- continuing bad loans.

Looking at LBG for instance, underlying profits on retail banking were £3.2 billion in 2012. Underlying losses from commercial banking were £0.3 billion. Underlying losses from "wealth, asset finance and international" were £0.9 billion, and insurance made a profit of £1.1 billion.

I'd even doubt that current accounts are a loss leader. They are an incredibly cheap form of finance for banks (very low interest rates, usually), and a useful source of income from charges, overdrafts, and a good marketing tool for further products.

Anyway, this thread is meant to be about retail not retail banking...

I'm desperately trying to think of something - anything that will bring the subject back to "City Centre Retail"...

There is an application by Paddy Power to open a betting shop in the ground unit of the Central Market (previously Bauhaus hairdressers and before that H Samuel).

I suppose its better than an empty unit but I can't help feeling a bit disappointed that such a prominent unit in a listed building (one of the few grand 'commercial' buildings in the city centre) will be another bookies. Off the top of my head that will make it 5 bookies in St Mary Street plus the new Ladbrokes in Caroline St and Bet Fred in Church Street.

PaddyPower by the market has been speculated for a while. As someone who is just leaving the industry, Hayes News have known and told us a few weeks back that they'd received an order to provide PaddyPower with Display Papers/RP. It's ridiculous how many LBO's there are open now in the area, with Ladbrokes opening on Caroline St and not long before that on Queen St, and Coral opening on Churchill Way. It's all about the FOBT machines, horrible they are, do you limit each shop to 4 forcing the clustering of bookies or allow them to have more and become de facto casinos.

Still more choice for consumers and more jobs on the flipside.

Lloyds makes losses on its commercial lending. It makes profits on its "retail banking" operation which includes personal loans, mortgages as well as savings and current accounts.

As an accountant you should know that the profit a bank makes is traditionally the spread between what it pays to depositors/savers and what it charges lenders. Thus, it is silly to try to count profits separately on the "deposits" part of its business separately from the "lending" parts of its business: the cheap money it gets in deposits which it then lands out at much higher rates to those wanting personal loans, credit cards, and mortgages is very much one of the drivers of its profits. You can try doing some transfer pricing based on what it would need to pay for the funds on the marketplace... and the fact it has those funds cheaper would then show up as a "profit" on the deposits!

And their Wealth, Asset Finance and International division is currently the largest contributor to losses in the business.

Cambo

All banks analyse their profitability by Lending NII and deposit NII with OOI making up the rest of the income side of the P&L. That is just the way they do it. Without giving too much away I know this to be fact. That is how banks operate. They look at net interest income (NII) which is the lending customer income less the cost of financing that income (LTP / ITP) or deposit customer income (a cost) plus the associated ITP/LTP (which in this case is income). It is most certainly not margin from lending less margin from deposits as you have claimed. Banks need to know how they are deriving their profits and whether it is coming from their Lending operation or deposit operation. Both are different products and drive profitability in a different way.

WAFI (or specifically Asset Finance) made a profit just short of £1bn this year. The Wealth and International is a bit of a dog but the non core part – Asset Finance – is looking to be hived off in the longer term as it doesn’t fit with LBG’s overall strategy of being just a retail bank. Sorry I should have explained that one better.

You really don’t need to try and give me an overview of financial services or banking more specifically. It is an industry I am extremely familiar with, having worked in various banks on various projects over the last 14 years or so.

May have already been mentioned, tesco have applied for a licence to sell alcohol in a new store in st davids house, wood street. The march of tesco shows no sign of abating.