An Australian computer scientist who claimed he invented bitcoin lied "extensively and repeatedly" and forged documents "on a grand scale" to support his false claim, a judge at London's High Court ruled on Monday, Reuters reported. Craig Wright had long claimed to have been the author of a 2008 white paper, the foundational text of bitcoin, published under the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto".

The UK government is continuing to resist stepping in to help Thames Water, despite its rapidly deteriorating financial situation, Bloomberg News reported. The utility needs to find new equity to stabilize its finances. Shareholders say they won’t put in more money and it’s difficult to see why a new investor would want to take on the burden of Thames’s £18 billion ($22.9 billion) debt pile. On Friday, Thames’s biggest shareholder wrote off the entire value of its stake in the latest sign of trouble for the utility.

Nine people have been charged in Britain for promoting unauthorised foreign exchange trading schemes on Instagram in the first crackdown on "finfluencers", the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said on Thursday. Emmanuel Nwanze, 30, and 33-year-old Holly Thompson offered advice on buying and selling high-risk contracts for difference (CFDs) over the social media platform between May 2018 and April 2021, although they were not authorised to do so, the regulator alleged.

The director of an online cryptocurrency academy has forced to close his business after misleading investors and failing to file up to date accounts with no record of a £5m transfer, Accountancy Daily reported. Amey Finance Academy has been wound up at the High Court following investigations into the company’s trading by the Insolvency Service. The academy was set up by sole director Desmond Amey in December 2018 to offer financial education and advice on cryptocurrency.

A Black Country engineering group has commenced a liquidation process which could threaten around 160 jobs, BusinessLive reported. Walsall, U.K.-based specialist castings and machining group Chamberlain said the move had come following a winding-up notice being issued by the company's main power supplier. In a statement to the stock exchange, the listed company said discussions had been ongoing with its creditors and major shareholders about its plight.

The U.K. labor market loosened a little more, in a fresh indication that the Bank of England could start cutting rates as early as next month, the Wall Street Journal reported. Unemployment ticked higher in the three months to March, at 4.3%, according to figures set out Tuesday by the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics. This was in line with the expectations of economists polled by The Wall Street Journal and continues a trend of rising joblessness, taking the rate to the highest since the middle of last year.

777 Partners, the U.S. investment firm trying to buy English Premier League football club Everton, has hired restructuring experts to overcome “various operational challenges,” according to an email sent to the group’s employees Thursday, Bloomberg News reported. Miami-based 777’s proposed takeover of Everton has been held up as the Premier League is yet to grant clearance, while 777 has asked for deadlines to be extended to complete the deal. Last week the company was accused of fraud by lenders in a New York court filing.

The U.K. economy returned to growth in the first three months of the year, a sign that the country is beginning to recover from the damage caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product between January and March was 0.6% higher than in the previous three-month period, the Office for National Statistics said Friday. It was the U.K.’s strongest performance since the final quarter of 2021, before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On an annualized basis, the U.K.

After a long stretch of high inflation, the Bank of England finally has its 2 percent inflation target firmly within its sights, the New York Times reported. The central bank said on Thursday that it expected inflation to reach its target in two years, and then go even lower, a forecast that comes as policymakers inch toward cutting interest rates. The majority of the bank’s nine-person rate-setting committee voted this week to hold rates at 5.25 percent, the highest since early 2018 and where they have been for nine months.

The Bank of England postponed one of its weekly repo operations because its auction platform was experiencing technical difficulties, Bloomberg News reported. Tuesday’s Indexed Long-Term Repo Operation, which was scheduled for 10 a.m. in London, was deferred until the same time on Wednesday due to problems with the Btender auction platform, according to statements from the BOE. A spokesperson at the central bank declined to comment on the cause of the technical issues. The BOE facility allows banks to borrow cash for a six-month period in exchange for other, less liquid assets.