Barclays is set to assume control of debt-burdened French poultry group Doux next month, a union said on Thursday, enabling the UK bank to pursue a turnaround plan for the business supported by the family that controls the company, Reuters reported. Barclays is expected to take an 80 percent stake in Doux, which went into court administration in early June, in exchange for forgiving debt of 140 million euros ($175 million). The plan received implicit backing from a French court on Aug. 1. "The transformation of Doux's Barclays debt into 80 percent of its capital should be implemented on Sept.

Britain’s public finances deteriorated in July as corporation tax receipts plunged, highlighting the coalition government’s struggle to balance the books while the economy is in recession, the Financial Times reported. Public sector net borrowing is £9.3bn higher so far this year than at the same stage last year, excluding some distorting effects, putting strain on the coalition’s plan to close the structural current deficit within five years.

Businesses are increasingly using a little known procedure to stave off the threat of insolvency. The number of company voluntary agreements, which allow businesses to renegotiate their debts, increased by 32% in the last year to 924 from 699 in the previous year, according to accountancy firm Wilkins Kennedy, The Guardian reported. To enter a CVA a company's arrangement for repaying creditors must be approved by three-quarters of them and supervised by an insolvency practitioner.

UK budget hotel chain Travelodge agreed a 635 million pound ($999.6 million) debt restructuring that will give lenders control of the business but confirms a significant loss for its Dubai owners who bought the company in 2006. The announcement comes after lending sources told Reuters in February that the group's lenders would assume control of Travelodge after it breached loan agreements in 2011.

UK unemployment levels dropped to their lowest in a year as the Olympic Games created jobs, showing the labour market's resilience in the face of deepening recession, the Irish Times reported. Jobless-benefit claims fell 5,900 to 1.59 million, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. The jobless total measured by International Labour Organization methods fell to 8 per cent in the second quarter from 8.1 percent in the three months through May.

Pressure on George Osborne for a softening of the government's hardline economic strategy intensified on Wednesday after leading economists who backed the chancellor's plans in opposition called for immediate action to lift Britain out of double-dip recession, The Guardian reported. In a blow to the chancellor, almost half the economists who strongly supported the Conservative party's deficit-reduction proposals in the runup to the 2010 election said it was time for a rethink and urged the Treasury to take advantage of low borrowing costs to boost spending on infrastructure projects.

After the party, the hangover looms: London's golden Olympics may soon be a distant memory as Britain returns to the reality of its economic mess and years of more belt tightening, Reuters reported. The 2012 Games have lifted the nation's spirits, but the government has few alternatives to an austerity drive that may last for the rest of this decade - although some academics and economists believe yet more radical policies may be needed.

An outgoing member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has challenged the governor Sir Mervyn King for his insistence that central banks should buy only government bonds in quantitative easing programmes to stimulate growth. Adam Posen told the Financial Times that the BoE could be much more effective in fostering economic recovery if it ditched “anguished religious ethics” over what it considered reasonable intervention.

Britain’s exports fell sharply in the second quarter, highlighting the difficulty the UK economy faces as it tries to recover amid slowing global growth, the Financial Times reported. Goods exports fell 3.1 per cent in volume terms as the UK recorded its biggest trade deficit for at least 15 years. David Tinsley, economist at BNP Paribas. described the data a “spectacularly bad”. The rumbling crisis in the eurozone, the destination of about 40 per cent of the UK’s exports, has been compounded by slowing growth in the US and emerging markets such as China.

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said the bank will "do all it can" to pull the economy out of recession, signaling further bond purchases using freshly created money, but ruling out a near-term cut in the key interest rate, The Wall Street Journal reported. Presenting the BOE's quarterly inflation report, in which the bank lowered its growth and inflation forecasts, Mr. King said the BOE will do its utmost to support the economy, and indicated that support will be channeled through a program known as quantitative easing that already totals 375 billion pounds ($585.79 billion).