Spanish banking giant Santander today confirmed its bid for more than 300 branches that are being sold off by part-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland in Britain, Finfacts reported. The owner of Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley is the sole bidder for the 318 branches which NatWest owner RBS is disposing on the instructions of the European Commission. The business being sold has about three million customers - - - two-thirds of which are small businesses - - and consists of RBS branches in England and Wales as well as its NatWest uniits in Scotland.

BP has tapped financial advisers at Goldman Sachs, Blackstone Group and Credit Suisse as pressure mounts on the British energy giant over the devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill, US media reported Monday. A BP spokesman denied the reports, saying the group did not want to reveal "who are our advisors and on what they are advising us," Agence France-Presse reported.

BP dismissed talk that it might seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the face of falling stock prices and threats from government officials to force the oil giant to pay more in costs related to the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Japan's Nomura Holdings Inc. is objecting to Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s attempt to consolidate legal action against Nomura's affiliates in three countries as the two investment banks battle over more than $1 billion of claims related to derivatives contracts, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. In papers filed Wednesday with the U.S.

More than 40 U.S. lawmakers called today for BP Plc to suspend its dividend, stop its advertising and spend the money instead cleaning up its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. “Not a single cent” should be spent on television ads, said Representative Lois Capps, a California Democrat, at a news conference in Washington.

Begbies Traynor, the corporate insolvency specialist, continues to expect UK companies going bust because of the recession, the Financial Times reported. “There are lots of zombie businesses, which are effectively the walking dead and have no chance of actually coming back to life,” said Ric Traynor, executive chairman. Most of the pain from the recession had yet to be felt, he added. Mr Traynor said he had yet to see any rise in the number of corporate insolvencies this year.

Private equity house Carlyle Group is the frontrunner to buy about 700 million pounds ($1.03 billion) worth of London offices linked to the failed White Tower commercial mortgage-backed securitisation (CMBS), a source close to the discussions told Reuters. Carlyle is in advanced talks to buy the Thames Portfolio that comprises five of the assets supporting the 1.15 billion pounds White Tower 2006-3 CMBS, which defaulted in July 2009 after a sharp correction in UK commercial property prices.

Reinsurers have bumped up prices for offshore energy-related insurance premiums by 50 percent following insurance industry losses of up to $3.5 billion from the BP plc oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Moody's Investor Service said in a report on Thursday, Reuters reported. Total insured losses from the worst oil spill in U.S. history are expected to be between $1.4 billion and $3.5 billion, although losses would be significantly higher if BP had purchased liability insurance instead of self-insuring its risks through its captive insurance programme, said Moody's.

TNK-BP, a joint venture between Britain's BP and a group of Russian billionaires, said on Thursday that its unit which holds the license to the vast Kovykta gas field had filed for bankruptcy, Agence France-Presse reported. TNK-BP said the RUSIA Petroleum unit is unable to pay off debts to its parent company. "The current financial situation precludes RUSIA Petroleum from timely repayment of its loans to TNK-BP Group," the company said in a statement. The loans were made to the subsidiary to finance the development of the vast Kovykta gas field, it said.

U.K. mortgage lenders are offering loans to “almost prime” and “complex prime” borrowers with “minor historic credit issues” who may have experienced financial “blips.” They don’t use the word subprime. Three years after defaults on U.S. subprime mortgages sparked the worst financial crisis in almost 80 years, General Electric Co.’s GE Money unit and Investec Plc’s Kensington division are once again lending to British customers rejected by mainstream banks, Bloomberg reported. This time, they say they’re offering less money to clients with better credit histories.