U.K. consumer sentiment worsened this month as the Iran war prompted renewed fears over price rises and added to concerns about the strength of the British economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Consumer confidence fell two points to minus 21 in March, the lowest point since April last year, according to research group GfK’s barometer, published Friday with the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions. Economists polled last week by The Wall Street Journal expected an even weaker reading of minus 24.

The U.K.’s annual rate of inflation was unchanged in February, but is set to rise over the coming months as energy and food prices jump in the wake of the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported. Consumer prices rose 3.0% on year, in line with January’s rise, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. Services inflation was 4.3%, down 0.1 percentage point on month, marking its lowest level since March 2022. But the inflation outlook has soured since the war in Iran caused energy prices to rise.

Labour is under pressure to explain why the Government has handed a troubled housebuilder more than £300m in taxpayer-backed loans and contracts, The Telegraph reported. Paul Holmes, the shadow housing minister, said there were “questions about Labour’s judgement” after it partnered with Vistry to deliver affordable housing. The London-listed building firm has been handed around £315m in grants and loans, according to Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister.

Britain's financial regulator said on Friday it had launched an enforcement investigation into mortgage ​lender Market Financial Solutions, which collapsed in ‌February leaving creditors including major banks and private credit funds facing a shortfall in excess of 1.3 billion pounds ($1.74 billion), Reuters reported. The Financial ​Conduct Authority said in a statement that ​London-based MFS was only registered with it ⁠and supervised for compliance with money laundering, terrorist financing ​and transfer of funds regulations, and not for wider ​financial regulation.

Citi group provided a GBP 100M line of credit to Interbridge Mortgages, a fast-growing UK lender backed by Paresh Raja, just as his Market Financial Solutions was hurtling toward collapse, according to a Bloomberg report. Raja controls a 40% stake in the Interbridge holding company and around GBP 30M of the funding line has been drawn. There is no indication that Interbridge was affected by the collapse of MFS, which has been accused of fraud that could leave major lenders facing losses of around GBP 1.3B.

The Bank of England held its main interest rate at 3.75 per cent on Thursday as the sharp oil and gas price hikes following the start of the Iran war have stoked renewed concerns about inflation, BNNBloomberg reported. The decision was widely anticipated after the United States and Israel started bombing Iran less than three weeks ago. All nine members of the Monetary Policy Committee voted to keep borrowing costs on hold, the first unanimous decision for more than four years. Until the war erupted on Feb.

Officials overseeing the wind-down of Market Financial Solutions Ltd., the UK mortgage lender that borrowed more than £2 billion ($2.7 billion) from Wall Street backers, have obtained a worldwide asset-freezing order against owner Paresh Raja, Bloomberg reported. Courts in London and Dubai granted the order, according to a spokesperson for AlixPartners, the insolvency firm appointed by creditors to oversee the insolvency of MFS. MFS borrowed from Wall Street banks and investment firms including Barclays Plc and Apollo Global Management Inc.’s Atlas SP Partners unit.

Elixir Labs, the issuer of yield-bearing tokenized fund deUSD, has launched a claims portal to return funds to lenders impacted by its exposure to Stream, Bankless.com reported. Elixir has committed to an approximately 80% recovery rate for users who lent against its deUSD and sdeUSD tokenized yield products through Euler and Morpho's lending markets. Eligible users in affected vaults and markets (as determined by a snapshot taken on or about November 2, 2025) can claim a pro rata distribution of recovered funds by agreeing to an Elixir-proposed settlement.

Visa and Mastercard can challenge a judgment that found their ​default multilateral interchange fees charged to ‌retailers infringe competition law, London's Court of Appeal ruled on Tuesday, in a long-running ​legal battle over the charges, Reuters reported. The Competition ​Appeal Tribunal ruled last year, in linked ⁠lawsuits brought by hundreds of merchants, ​that Visa and Mastercard's multilateral interchange fees ​breached European competition law.