Investors holding notes with a nominal value of USD1.75bn against the UK subsidiary of Petroplus look increasingly unlikely to recover more than a small part of their principal after the administrator of the UK oil refinery business said it had not been able to sell the site after four months of trying, International Financing Review reported. "We have worked tirelessly to explore all feasible options for the refinery. We have had contact with over 100 possible investors and purchasers.

Lenders to UK waste manager Biffa are bracing themselves for a debt-for-equity restructuring if it is unable to sell certain divisions to reduce its 1-billion pound ($1.57 billion) debt, Reuters reported. Biffa is expected to breach loan covenants this year due to reduced waste volume on the back of lower consumption. . Its earnings will also be hit by a new UK landfill tax.

The prospect of fresh action to boost the flagging British economy loomed larger on Thursday after official figures showed a steeper fall in activity than previously thought and the crisis-hit eurozone drifted towards a deeper slump, The Guardian reported. Labour seized on data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing that gross domestic product declined by 0.3% in the first three months of 2012 as evidence that Britain is ill-prepared to withstand a deterioration in the rest of Europe over the coming months.

A UK competition probe could define the future of the "Big Four" accounting firms after the European Union delayed its reform of the multi-billion euro sector until after it reports, Reuters reported. KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and Ernst & Young check the books of nearly all blue-chip companies in the world and many policymakers want this "oligopoly" cut down to size so that the EU's 8,300 listed companies have more choice of auditor. The Big Four are also under the gun for giving clean bills of health to banks just before they had to be rescued by taxpayers in the 2007-09 financial crisis.

Solicitor Noel Smyth’s Alburn Real Estate UK is to be put into receivership by Rothschild, ending his efforts to regain command of the heavily indebted property portfolio which has breached a number of its borrowing covenants, the Irish Times reported. The move by Rothschild follows the failure on Tuesday of Alburn, which owns 47 offices, warehouses and other properties, to meet a demand from the bank for accelerated repayment of approximately £200 million (€250 million), including interest.

A shareholder rebellion over executive pay rippling through the U.K. is exposing fissures inside some of the country's biggest companies and could reverberate in boardrooms on both sides of the Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal reported. The uprising began last month when an unusually high percentage of shareholders at Barclays PLC voted against the bank's pay plan. People familiar with the matter say the vote was preceded by an internal fight on the bank's board, with some directors pushing Chief Executive Bob Diamond to forgo his bonus—an idea that was rejected.

Britain's closely watched austerity program is facing a difficult stretch in which its effectiveness and political viability will be tested, two years after the country became one of the first in Europe to announce tough debt-tackling measures in the wake of the financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported. That is because the majority of cuts are yet to come in a program that is due to run another five years.

MF Global's European administrator KPMG is teaming up with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Lehman Brothers's administrator, to try to speed up the return of assets and cash to former clients of both failed brokers, Reuters reported. KPMG said on Tuesday it will work with PWC to establish whether unsecured funds can be "traced" and treated as if they were secured, following a ruling by Britain's Supreme Court.

The National Asset Management Agency’s efforts to sell off British properties outside London by the end of 2013 has been complicated by news that the UK’s commercial property market is in its worst downturn since records began, the Irish Times reported. The value of shops, offices and warehouses is 31 per cent below the September 2007 peak, according to a survey by Investment Property Databank (IPD), while prices fell by a further 0.7 per cent in the first three months of this year.

The U.K. government Monday said it is on track to pass legislation that will protect the retail operations of banks from the banks' more risky investment-bank activities by the end of this parliament in 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ring fencing, as such protection is known, is the central recommendation of the Independent Commission on Banking, a review set up in June 2010 in response to the financial crisis and bank bailouts, shortly after the government came to power. The ICB was charged with finding ways to ensure that the U.K.