It’s not the first time Patisserie Valerie has been hit by a bomb: during the second world war the original cafe in London’s Soho was wrecked by the Luftwaffe. But Madame Valerie, a Belgian who started the cafe in the 1920s, simply picked herself up and opened a new shop nearby.
This time the business has been struck by a bombshell of the financial variety, but the damage has been no less serious. On Monday, Patisserie Valerie was a stock-market darling worth £450m. By Tuesday night the management team was racing to raise cash after the discovery of a gaping black hole in its accounts. Come Thursday night, finance director Chris Marsh had been arrested and bailed, and on Friday its famous chairman, business guru Luke Johnson, was shaking out his pockets to find £20m and keep the plates spinning.
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