Quiz Clothing, the troubled fashion business, is close to collapsing into administration days after its shares were delisted from the London stock market.

Sky News has learnt that Quiz, which is chaired by the former JD Sports chief Peter Cowgill, is lining up Teneo as administrator in a move expected to take place before the end of next week.

The pre-pack insolvency would be intended to enable the founding Ramzan family to take control of a restructured business with substantially fewer stores and employees.

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Quiz currently operates roughly 60 standalone stores and dozens more concessions, employing about 1,500 people.

Last month, Sky News reported that Quiz’s main lender, HSBC, had hired restructuring experts at Interpath to advise it.

A solvent restructuring of the business is now said to have been effectively ruled out, although one source said the timing of an insolvency filing was still unclear.

Quiz’s troubles come amid growing financial pressure on retailers, many of which are facing a deepening challenge in 2025 as a result of looming hikes to employer’s national insurance.

In the last 10 days alone, Sky News has revealed that: Poundland’s parent has hired advisers to assess options for the leading discount chain; Lakeland, the family-owned kitchenware retailer, has been put up for sale; and that The Original Factory Shop was on the verge of a sale to family office Baaj Capital.

At the weekend, Sky News also revealed that WH Smith was in talks to sell its entire high street chain, numbering 500 stores and about 5,000 employees.

Quiz Clothing, Teneo and Interpath all declined to comment.

Donald Trump thinks the Chinese startup DeepSeek, which claims it has a technical advantage over US rivals, should be “a wakeup call” for American AI firms.

DeepSeek says its artificial intelligence models are comparable with those from US giants, like OpenAI which is behind ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, but potentially a fraction of the cost.

That has triggered a fall in various US shares, especially chipmaker Nvidia which registered a record one-day loss for any company on Wall Street.

But the US president believes the success of the Chinese firm could be helpful to America’s AI aspirations.

“The release of DeepSeek, AI from a Chinese company should be a wakeup call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win,” Mr Trump said in Florida.

He pointed to DeepSeek’s ability to use fewer computing resources. “I view that as a positive, as an asset… you won’t be spending as much, and you’ll get the same result, hopefully,” he added.

On Monday, the DeepSeek assistant had surpassed ChatGPT in downloads from Apple’s app store.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has given his rival some acknowledgement in a post on X, reacting to DeepSeek’s R1 “reasoning” model – a core part of the AI technology which answers questions.

“DeepSeek’s r1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they’re able to deliver for the price,” he wrote.

But Mr Altman was also defiant: “We will obviously deliver much better models and also it’s legit invigorating to have a new competitor! we will pull up some releases.”

There have been concerns DeepSeek could undermine the potentially $500bn (£401bn) AI investment by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank in Stargate which Mr Trump announced last week at the White House.

That project essentially aims to build vastly more computing power to boost AI development.

But while addressing Republicans in Miami on Monday, Mr Trump remained upbeat. He claimed that Chinese leaders had told him the US had the most brilliant scientists in the world.

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He indicated that if Chinese industry could come up with cheaper AI technology, US companies would follow.

“We always have the ideas. We’re always first. So I would say that’s a positive that could be very much a positive development.

“So instead of spending billions and billions, you’ll spend less, and you’ll come up with, hopefully, the same solution,” Mr Trump said.

The intense attention on the Chinese firm has not all been good news though. It reported suffering “large-scale malicious attacks” on its services.

The company said it was hit by a cyber attack on Monday which disrupted users’ ability to register on the site.

The average asking price to rent a home outside London has fallen for the first time since before the COVID pandemic, according to a property website.

Rightmove credited improved levels of rental properties for the welcome shift, but declared that advertised private rents in the capital continued to tick up, for a 13th consecutive quarter, between October to December.

It reported an average sum of £2,695 per calendar month (pcm) for London, though that was only 0.1% higher than the previous quarter.

The rest of Britain had an average newly advertised rent of £1,341 pcm – down 0.2%.

The trend for the country as a whole is of a price slowdown following years of unprecedented growth that has resulted in successive monthly highs.

Rents are currently 4.7% up on a year earlier, the slowest rate of growth since 2021.

The property website said a rising supply of rental homes to choose from was improving the balance of supply and demand, although there were typically still 10 applications being made for every rental property.

It also suggested that many tenants had shifted their focus towards the sales market due to continued steep competition for rentals and as borrowing costs were now down from cost of living crisis peaks.

Rightmove’s property expert Colleen Babcock said: “While new tenants are still paying more than they were at this time last year, the pace of growth continues to slow.

“However, though this is the big picture of market activity, agents on the ground still tell us that the market is very hot, and some areas have improved more than others when it comes to the supply and demand balance.”

The northeast of England was said to have seen the biggest boost to supply, with Wales the smallest.

Alex Bloxham, a partner and head of residential lettings at the consultancy Bidwells, said: “These figures suggest landlords are continuing to invest in their buy-to-let portfolios, while more tenants are choosing to stay put, likely due to continued macroeconomic uncertainty and the up-front costs involved in relocating.”

The debt charity StepChange reacted to the figures by saying that they were unlikely to bring any immediate relief to millions of families grappling with higher bills.

Its recent polling suggested that 22% of people renting privately were always worried about money, with rents just one elevated cost to bear as many other bills such as those for food and energy show little sign of easing.

Water and council tax costs are also due to rise sharply from April.

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The charity’s Richard Lane added: “We’re pleased to see the Renters Rights Bill progressing through parliament, which will end section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions – a long overdue piece of legislation.

“However, we’ve long called for strengthened protections for private renters facing financial hardship.

“Our research shows that a significant proportion of private renters are having to rely on credit just to cover their rent, which is unsustainable and will only trap people in a cycle of problem debt.

“If you are struggling with rent arrears or any other type of debt, free and impartial advice is available from charities like StepChange.”