Rhode: Skin-deep business deal
When you hear of a three-year-old company being sold at a valuation of $1bn, you could be forgiven for expecting it to offer some revolutionary technological advance to boldly go where no man has gone before, as fans of Star Trek and the split infinitive might suggest.
You might also be surprised to discover that, in the year of our Lord 2025, amid all the talk of trade wars and economic gloom, such a heady valuation has been awarded to yet another skincare brand. Yet, the massed ranks of beauty editors will tell you, Rhode is not just a skincare brand, it is the skincare brand of Hailey Bieber, nepo baby, model and wife of the increasingly dishevelled pop star Justin.
The brand is aimed squarely at women and girls aged 13 to 28, and it grew on the back of Hailey sharing her skincare routines on YouTube vlogs and to her handy 55-million followers on Instagram.
It boasts of “scientifically proven formulas”, and it instantly sells out must-have products such as a phone case complete with a holder for its peptide lip balm. It has a cosmetic chemist and a dermatologist on its skincare advisory board, and it is dedicated to “simplifying many of the mysteries and complex narratives behind efficacious skincare”.
Its sale to E.l.f. Beauty — for $800m in cash and stock upfront and another potential earnout of $200m over three years — is expected to take the brand to another level, moving beyond its direct-to-consumer model and rolling it out to bricks and mortar via the beauty retailer Sephora.
NatWest: Cut down to size
After 17 long years, the UK government has finally sold the last of the shares in NatWest that it acquired at the heart of the global financial crisis, when it faced the fairly binary decision of stepping in or allowing the economy to implode.
It injected £46bn for an 84% stake in what was then known as the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) via rescue financings in 2008 and 2009, and given that the bank’s share price has been languishing below the bailout price for years, the poor old taxpayer has taken a £10.5bn hit on the deal.
Under the leadership of Fred “The Shred” Goodwin, RBS had expanded hugely, to the extent that it was briefly the world’s biggest bank — with £2.2-trillion on its balance sheet. Giddy with excitement, it was pulling off deals such as the acquisition of Dutch bank ABN Amro for £49bn, at what turned out to be the very top of the market. Executive remuneration was roaring as loudly as the private jets, and a sparkling £350m campus outside Edinburgh marked the height of its hubris.
The NatWest that returns to private ownership is a fraction of the size of the RBS that had to be rescued, with 59,200 employees in 2024 as opposed to 199,800 in 2008, but critically, it posted an operating profit of £6.2bn in 2024 as against a loss of £40.7bn in 2008.
In the intervening years it reached a $4.9bn settlement with the US department of justice over its role in the mortgage-backed securities market, and the RBS brand had become so publicly toxic that it was rebranded as NatWest in 2020.
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