The economic impact of sodden summer was laid bare on Thursday by dire news from major retailers showing that torrential rain had hurt already weak demand in an economy showing few signs of pulling out of recession, Reuters reported. Shops selling everything from home-improvement items to sportswear and goods for mothers and babies were hit. Official retail data also indicated that celebrations to mark Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee failed to provide the much hyped and hoped-for boost to spending, raising the question of whether the London Olympics will get the shop tills ringing.

MF Global's European administrator KPMG has won the backing of the British High Court to return 54 million pounds ($84 million) of client assets next month in an early victory for creditors seeking over 1 billion pounds of assets, Reuters reported. KPMG, made special administrator when the broker collapsed in October last year, said on Wednesday the High Court had approved its distribution plan, meaning the administrator can start returning the assets on Aug. 1.

Britain's banks have been told to test how they would cope if several euro zone countries exited the single currency, the UK's Financial Services Authority watchdog said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. FSA Chairman Adair Turner said Britain's banks needed to think about problems arising from their assets and liabilities being redenominated into another currency, even though the likelihood of this happening was still small. "We've certainly encouraged them to run those scenarios for Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland," Turner told parliament's Treasury Select Committee.

More than a quarter of shops and a fifth of hotels are at serious risk of going out of business in the next year, according to the trade body for insolvency professionals, DailyRecord.co.uk reported. Research by R3 found 274 retail businesses and 30 hotels had a high risk of going bust within the next 12 months. Analysis showed there are a further 1238 retailers and 137 hoteliers who are vulnerable to failure over the same period. This means that 26.15 per cent of retail businesses and 17.99 per cent of hotels in Scotland are at some risk of failure.

Britain's growth prospects for the next two years have worsened more than those of any other big advanced economy over the past three months, the International Monetary Fund said on Monday, Reuters reported. The sharp downgrade chimes with other economists' darkening assessments, and the IMF said it was too soon to say if a recent flurry of official measures to stimulate growth would be enough, or if the government will have to ease back further on its fiscal austerity plans.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Commerzbank AG and Standard Bank Group Ltd may be betting Dubai will improve terms on a $10 billion debt restructuring to protect its reputation after a near default in 2009, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. The banks walked away from talks with government-owned Dubai Group after 18 months without an accord, two people familiar with the situation said July 9. The banks disagreed with demands for loan maturities of 12 years, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because the negotiations aren’t public.

Deutsche Annington Immobilien AG, Germany's leading residential property owner, on Tuesday, July 10, unveiled a preliminary agreement to restructure €4.3 billion ($5.27 billion) of debt in a deal that could lead to a public listing in 2013 or 2014, The Deal Pipeline reported. If the deal goes ahead, British buyout firm Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd., which owns the German business through a dedicated fund, will start the ball rolling with an injection of €504 million, roughly half in cash. Terra Firma will deliver the other half by forgiving a shareholder loan.

Royal Bank of Scotland and two other banks have abandoned talks on restructuring Dubai Group’s $10bn debt and threatened to bring unprecedented legal action against the investment vehicle of Dubai’s ruler, sources close to the matter said, Gulf Times reported on a Reuters story. The walkout by RBS, German lender Commerzbank and South Africa’s Standard Bank at the beginning of June could prevent a deal for the entire restructuring just as an initial agreement is about to be circulated to other banks, five sources said.

Tighter credit conditions and a weak economy weighed on the U.K. housing market in June as house prices fell and activity slowed, a survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors showed Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. Separately, a survey from the British Retail Consortium U.K. retail sales for the first half of 2012 were subdued as the wettest June on record curbed spending, despite shoppers having an extra day off to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Jubilee. House prices retreated further in June amid a weak economy and the euro-zone debt crisis.

Britain's banks are "throttling" the economic recovery because of an anti-business culture which focuses on short-term profits, the business secretary, Vince Cable, has said. As Ed Balls warned of widespread outrage if the ousted Barclays chief executive, Bob Diamond, receives a £16m pay-off, Cable accused banks of undermining multibillion-pound measures to help businesses, The Guardian reported.