Asda is planning to sell about 20 supermarket stores for £400m to generate more cash for the business, The Telegraph reported. The supermarket chain is looking to offload the stores, which are located across the country, and lease them back for around 20 years. It has appointed property adviser Eastdil Secured to seek out buyers, according to property-focused publication Green Street News. Sale-and-leaseback deals are popular among major supermarkets as a means of raising capital to shore up their balance sheets.

The U.K.’s annual rate of inflation jumped further above the Bank of England’s target in April as businesses raised their prices in response to higher payroll taxes and increased utility charges, an expected move that will nonetheless reinforce the central bank’s caution, the Wall Street Journal reported. Consumer prices rose 3.5% in April compared with a year earlier, the highest rate of inflation since January 2024 and up from the 2.6% of March this year, the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics said Wednesday.

Britain and the European Union signed a deal to ease trade and bolster security cooperation, taking the biggest step to improve their relationship since the U.K. quit the bloc five years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported. EU leaders gathered in London alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday to unveil the deal, which doesn’t undo Brexit but shows both sides have buried the hatchet after years of painful wrangling.

The Insolvency Service will take over NATIS’s viable investigation cases of Covid-19 financial support fraud in a bid to recoup taxpayers’ money lost to fraudsters in the U.K., according to a press release. Following a review of National Investigation Service (NATIS) performance to ensure the state works for people – it showed that public money was not being spent effectively – which is why all ongoing viable cases will be transferred from the organisation to the Insolvency Service over the coming months.

Britain on Thursday told its antitrust regulator to get behind its push for economic growth and minimise uncertainty for businesses by making more timely, transparent and responsive interventions in merger control, digital markets and consumer protection, Reuters reported. Since taking power last year, the Labour government has stepped up pressure on the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and other regulators, demanding they play their part in tearing down barriers that hold back growth. The CMA is independent but it follows a "strategic steer" set by the secretary of state for business.

The European Union wants a trade deal with the U.S. that sees a larger reduction in tariffs than negotiations with the U.K. and China have so far yielded, officials from the bloc said Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported. President Trump imposed a series of tariffs that affect Europe’s makers of automobiles, steel and aluminum. On April 2, he announced a sharp rise in tariffs on all imports from Europe, but a week later reduced the increase to 10% for 90 days to allow for negotiations. Last week, the U.S. and the U.K.

A UK division of Sanjeev Gupta’s steel empire faces insolvency, after its parent withdrew a restructuring plan that was fiercely rejected by creditors, Bloomberg Law reported. Speciality Steel UK Ltd., an operator of plants in northern England, was unable to get creditors to agree to a plan to reduce its liabilities within an acceptable time frame ahead of a London court hearing on May 15, GFG Alliance said in a statement. The bulk of the business’s creditors relate to funding provided to Gupta’s GFG Alliance by Greensill Capital before it collapsed in 2021.