Henderson Global Investors said that it had acquired a major development site in the southeast English city of Winchester for shops and over 300 homes, from the administrators of UK developer Thornfield, Reuters reported today. The 600,000-square-foot Silver Hill project was put on hold after Thornfield entered into administration last January, Henderson said on Wednesday. Henderson said that it got the development through the acquisition of two Thornfield entities from administrators Deloitte for an undisclosed sum.

Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $553 million and admit to criminal wrongdoing yesterday, settling a long-running investigation into tax shelter fraud that prosecutors say generated billions of dollars in bogus tax benefits, the New York Times reported today. In an agreement with the United States Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, Deutsche Bank will avoid prosecution for helping 2,100 customers evade taxes through 2,300 financial transactions.

What is not in the documents published by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, and the escape hatches that are, may have more impact on how financial institutions will operate following a global credit crisis that led to $1.8 trillion in bank losses and writedowns, according to an Bloomberg analysis today. The committee’s most significant achievement, members say, an agreement to increase the amount of capital banks need to hold, will not go into full effect for eight years.

Hungary's central bank raised interest rates for the second month in a row, deepening the rift between it and the country's government, which is trying to jump-start a flagging national economy, the Wall Street Journal reported today. After announcing another quarter-point increase in the National Bank of Hungary's policy rate Monday, the central bank's governor, Andras Simor, said that the step was necessary to keep inflation in check.

Moody's Investors Service warned it may lower Portugal's credit rating by as much as two notches, dealing another blow to investor confidence in the euro zone, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Moody's warning came less than a week after the ratings agency said that it may downgrade its ratings on Spanish government debt. In putting Portugal's A1 long term and Prime-1 short-term government bond ratings on review, Moody's cited uncertainties over the longer-term health of Portugal's economy, which could suffer from the government's fiscal austerity plans.

Spain said that its regional governments are on track to meet their budget targets this year, its latest effort to quell investor fears that it could be the next European country to need a financial bailout, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Facing intense market pressure, Spain for the first time opened its regions' books before year-end in a bid to address investor worries that the regions' deteriorating accounts could derail the government's austerity drive.

The British Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has today launched a crack down on doorstep loan providers, warning more than 50 firms they have three months to prove they are in compliance with the Consumer Credit Act, or they could lose their operations license, the Guardian (U.K.) reported today. Over the past 18 months the OFT and Trading Standards officers visited 200 doorstep loan providers and said half of them failed to fully demonstrate competence in a number of different ways.

George Osborne, the British finance minister, insists he does not aim to boost London by soft-pedaling on U.K. regulation of banks in the wake of new U.S. rules, the Wall Street Journal reported today. "I'm not looking for regulatory advantage or arbitrage. If anything, I think we had too much of that in the run-up to the banking crisis," Osborne said. The chancellor, who met with the heads of Wall Street's biggest banks during his visit to the U.S. last week, declined to say whether the British government intends to force banks to make structural changes, as the U.S.

Analysts and investors said that France risks losing its top AAA grade as Europe’s debt crisis prompts a wave of downgrades that threatens to engulf the region’s highest-rated borrowers, with Belgium also facing a possible cut, Bloomberg News reported today. Moody’s Investors Service said on Dec. 15 that it may lower Spain’s rating, citing “substantial funding requirements,” and slashed Ireland’s rating by five levels on Dec. 17. Standard & Poor’s is reviewing its assessments of Ireland, Portugal and Greece.

The European Central Bank warned Ireland that proposed legislation revamping the country's financial system could threaten some of the ECB's operations, and pressed Irish officials for assurances that the central bank's collateral rights will be protected, the Wall Street Journal reported today. "The ECB has serious concerns that the draft law is insufficiently legally certain on a number of critical issues" including rules on collateral posted by banks seeking emergency loans from the ECB, the central bank said in an opinion paper posted on its website.