Struggling British video games retailer Game, denied new titles by suppliers, has put itself up for sale and warned shareholders their equity in the firm could be worthless, Reuters reported.

Barclays PLC cut Chief Executive Bob Diamond's pay packet by a third to £6.3 million ($9.97 million) in 2011, as a series of major U.K banks lowered executive bonuses amid weakening competition to retain top talent in the sector and glum financial results, The Wall Street Journal reported. In its annual report, Barclays said it cut its total 2011 remuneration for top executives and directors by 22% to £62.2 million compared with a year earlier. Bonus pay at Barclays's investment-banking arm fell by around a third to £1.74 billion. Mr.

British banks are in denial over their failure to deal with the financial crisis and the need to restructure their existing banking model, the Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King said in a newspaper interview on Monday. King said Britain's banks blamed him for not offering more support during the crisis because they could not "face up" to their own failures and the need for a restructured model, Reuters reported. "I think it is because they found it very, very difficult to face up to the failure of their banking model.

An arcane system at the heart of a global investigation into whether banks colluded in setting interest rates may endure simply because it is so deeply embedded in trillions of dollars' worth of financial contracts, Reuters reported. The London Interbank Offered Rate, known as Libor, is a daily poll that asks a group of banks at what rate they think they will be able to borrow. The rate is supposed to reflect the level at which banks lend to one another.

It’s hard to tell sometimes who is calling the shots at the Royal Bank of Scotland: management or politicians, The New York Times DealBook blog reported. When Britain bailed out the financial firm in 2008 and took a majority stake, the government promised to remain a passive investor. But some employees and analysts now say the line has blurred, as politicians push the bank to rein in executive compensation, bolster lending and limit risky businesses.

The cost to pension industry of the Bank of England's latest round of quantitative easing could total 90 billion pounds ($141 billion), diverting company cash away from investment in the economy in order to plug retirement fund deficits, the industry warned on Thursday, Reuters reported. Quantitative easing (QE) depresses the yield on government bonds, known as gilts, a staple investment for pensions funds, making it more expensive to pay for future liabilities, the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) said.

UK regulators and global banks are discussing a potentially far-reaching overhaul of the calculation and regulation of interbank lending rates, amid claims that the benchmark for $350tn contracts worldwide may have been subject to manipulation, the Financial Times reported. The review comes as regulators in North America, Europe and Japan have expanded their year-long probes into alleged manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rates, and other benchmark lending rates, which help set the price of financial products, including mortgages and credit cards.

Manufacturers reported further growth in February and, despite a slight slowdown, the sector's recovery is reducing the need for more stimulus from the central bank as the economy is slowly moving out of the danger zone, Reuters reported. Some Bank of England policymakers, including Governor Mervyn King, this week played down the likelihood of another cash boost, and news that the sluggish housing market is gaining a touch of momentum bolstered views that February's 50 billion pound cash injection may have been the last.

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.