More than half of Britain’s banks expect a rise in the number of companies defaulting on their loans this year amid warnings that financial houses are going on a lending “diet” and won’t be able to drive the economic recovery, Scotsman.com reported. Businesses looking to borrow more money or refinance their loans face “much tougher” conditions being imposed by the banks, according to a report published today.

State-owned Royal Bank of Scotland is expected to pay out up to 400 million pounds in bonuses to its corporate banking staff as it gets ready to unveil a full-year loss forecast at up to 1.2 billion pounds on Thursday, Reuters reported. The move is expected to increase anger that the bank is still paying large salaries while thousands, including more than 30,000 layoffs at the bank in the last three years, lose their jobs in a weakening global economy.

Hellas Telecommunications Luxembourg II SCA filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy to put on hold certain lawsuits pending against the company in New York State Supreme Court, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. The company, based in London, listed both debt and assets of more than $100 million in documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Chapter 15 protects foreign companies from U.S. lawsuits and creditor claims while a company reorganizes abroad. Hellas Telecommunications Luxembourg is asking the U.S.

British refinery Coryton will continue to operate for at least three more months after Marcel Van Poecke, a co-founder of insolvent owner Petroplus, teamed up with Morgan Stanley and investor KKR to provide fresh crude supplies, Reuters reported. Coryton is the most coveted asset of the five refineries owned by Petroplus around Europe, traders and analysts say. It has been running at half capacity since banks stopped financing Petroplus in late December.

Top banks fell short of their government targets to lend to small businesses last year, official data showed on Monday, dealing a blow to the Conservative-led coalition's hopes of removing a barrier to economic recovery, Reuters reported. The "Project Merlin" deal had obliged banks to meet fixed lending targets in recompense for state aid during the financial crisis, and banks' failure to meet their goal will raise pressure on the government to toughen its stance on the sector.

The spectre of financial meltdown returned to British football on Monday after Rangers and Portsmouth both applied to be placed into administration, The Guardian reported. Rangers, one of the game's great institutions and by far the biggest club to have their existence thus threatened in the modern era, have claimed they are facing a tax bill of "substantially more than £50m" after lodging papers confirming the move in Edinburgh on Monday The club are virtually certain to appoint an administrator to take control of affairs at Ibrox within the next 10 working days.

The trustee supervising the liquidation of MF Global Holdings Ltd.'s brokerage on Friday said that more than $1.6 billion in customer cash remains out of his grasp, more than previously estimated, The Wall Street Journal reported. Included in that figure for the first time is roughly $700 million in client money residing in the U.K., which is likely to be the center of a legal fight with KPMG, the U.K.-based administrator overseeing the unwinding of MF Global's London-based division. "We now know we're in for a long haul with the U.K.

The U.K. economy will remain subdued during 2012 as the euro-zone crisis weighs on sentiment, but it will avoid slipping back into recession due to an improvement in net trade and business investment, one of the country's main business groups is expected to say Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Confederation of British Industry, in an advance news release, said the level of uncertainty surrounding the economic outlook had led it to cut its forecast for 2012 gross domestic product growth to 0.9% from its November forecast of 1.2%.

Swiss trading house Vitol and two other companies are interested in leasing the UK's Coryton refinery from administrators, sources familiar with the discussions said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Administrators PwC have has been looking to find a buyer for Coryton since Petroplus, Europe's largest independent refiner by capacity, went into administration at the end of December. Vitol and PwC declined to comment.

The Bank of England looks set to inject more cash into the economy to shore up a stuttering recovery, despite signs that the country may have avoided slipping back into recession, Reuters reported. The central bank is expected to announce 50 billion pounds in additional quantitative easing asset purchases later on Thursday, though the decision of the nine-member Monetary Policy Committee may not be unanimous given recent more upbeat economic news.