A cross-party group of UK lawmakers has launched a parliamentary inquiry into the banking problems dogging the country's crypto industry, probing why firms struggle to open accounts and why banks curb crypto-related payments, Decrypt.com reported.

Insurers backing British retirement funds have invested about a tenth of their portfolios in opaque, hard-to-price private assets, according to an S&P report that warns such holdings pose a growing risk and could be difficult to sell in a crisis, the Financial Times reported. The research found that private credit holdings within the most opaque category of assets — those that rarely traded and lacked “observable” inputs for pricing — made up more than 10 per cent of the portfolios of Legal & General, Standard Life and Brookfield-owned Just Group.

The company behind a major North Yorkshire town centre redevelopment project has said its scheme is progressing, YorkPress.co.uk reported. ​Plans to turn Scarborough's former Brunswick centre into a multiplex cinema and leisure destination have not faltered and are going ahead, Scarborough Group International (SGI), the company behind the scheme, has said. ​It comes amid rumours about the future of the project and the company leading the redevelopment, which is set to be supported with £3.5m of money from the Government's Pride in Place initiative.

Shoreditch Works is the kind of real-estate project big cities say they need: It aims to revitalize a rundown block in east London, delivering about 80 new homes, retail space for several thousand workers, a green tech incubator and new pedestrian lanes and public space, the Wall Street Journal reported. Developers have spent four years trying to convince authorities to approve their plan, submitting more than 9,000 pages in documentation. Local planning officers denied the bid earlier this year, saying it lacked detail.

Thousands of ordinary investors are exposed after a litigation funding firm collapsed owing at least £250 million in what is expected to be one of the biggest corporate failures in the sector, TheTimes.com reported. Woodville Consultants was placed into administration a day after its chief executive warned backers that such an outcome would not be “good for our investors”. The group says that it provides loans to UK law firms to pursue litigation related to the car finance scandal by raising money from “loan notes” and bonds.

The U.K. economy returned to growth in May on robust services-sector activity, but faces renewed uncertainty and the prospect of higher energy costs as the U.S. and Iran resumed hostilities around the Strait of Hormuz, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product grew 0.1%, rebounding from a decline of 0.1% in April, the Office for National Statistics said Thursday. Economists polled last week by The Wall Street Journal had also expected a 0.1% pickup. The British economy outpaced the U.S.

A six-year-old U.K. restructuring plan is growing in popularity among financially distressed U.S. companies as a way to cut debt while preserving equity and minimizing business disruption, Bloomberg Law reported. The plan can keep companies publicly listed, can provide liability releases for nonbankrupt third parties, and is more confidential than chapter 11 bankruptcy. The approach falls under Part 26A of the U.K.’s Companies Act. It has attracted businesses such as retailer Fossil Group and energy infrastructure company New Fortress Energy, both of which established U.K.

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey warned against calls for broad deregulation ‌in a speech at an annual dinner for Britain's banking elite where a year earlier finance minister Rachel Reeves likened red tape to a "boot on the neck" of businesses, Reuters reported. Bailey told the annual Mansion House dinner in the City of ​London financial district on Tuesday that well-designed regulation was vital for supporting economic growth. "To simply ​argue for less regulation is unhelpfully reductive," Bailey said in a text of ⁠the speech provided in advance by the BoE.