An effort by the American media executive Jeff Zucker and his Emirati backers to acquire London’s Daily Telegraph appeared to be on life support on Wednesday after the British government advanced legislation that would bar foreign state ownership of newspapers and newsmagazines, the New York Times reported. The move by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would torpedo Mr. Zucker’s bid in its current form, which relies heavily on financing from investment partners in the United Arab Emirates.

The U.K. economy rebounded in January, registering modest growth after falling into a technical recession in the second half of last year, Bloomberg News reported. Gross domestic product rose 0.2% following a 0.1% decline in December, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday. Services and construction delivered the gains, offsetting a drop in industrial production. The figures leave Britain on track to grow over the first quarter as a whole, bringing the recession to an end.

U.K. wage growth eased marginally, as the unemployment rate ticked up, a small relief to Bank of England policymakers hoping that labor pressures would ease ahead of expected interest-rate cuts later this year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The headline measure of average annual pay growth, excluding bonuses, was 6.1% in the three months to January, compared with 6.2% in the final quarter of 2023, a fifth fall in as many months, according to data published Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics. The rate was the lowest since October 2022.

The majority of North East councillors have agreed to accept Budget proposals aimed at saving the local authority from effective bankruptcy, the Northern Echo reported. The Full Middlesbrough Council met at the town hall on Friday to cast their vote on the plans which include the maximum council tax rise, along with a charge for green waste collection. They also agreed to accept exceptional financial support from the Government allowing the council to borrow £13.4m. The vote saw 25 councillors vote for the Budget plans and 16 against while five abstained.

A U.K. government agency is seeking to disqualify Lex Greensill, the founder of failed specialty lender Greensill Capital, from acting as a director, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Insolvency Service said on Thursday that it had started proceedings against Greensill to disqualify him from running or controlling companies for up to 15 years, owing to his conduct as a director of Greensill Capital. The agency had been investigating the directors of Greensill after its collapse in March 2021.

NHS Lothian accepted the handover of an unfinished children's hospital to stop the private consortium behind the deal going bust, a public inquiry has heard, according to BBC Scotland News. The IHSL group building the Sick Kids in Edinburgh was facing insolvency, just months before the facility was due to open in July 2019. If IHSL went bust then NHS Lothian faced paying out at least £150m to get the project finished. The health board took ownership of the building in February 2019. But four months later last-minute inspections found safety concerns over the hospital's ventilation systems.

Retail sales growth in the U.K. slowed in February, when consumer demand was damped by record rainfall, according to a British Retail Consortium report, the Wall Street Journal reported. Total retail sales for the four weeks to Feb. 24 increased by 1.1% on year, compared with annual 1.2% growth the prior month and the three-month average of 1.4%, according to the BRC-KPMG Retail Sales Monitor report published Tuesday. Annual growth stood at 5.2% in February last year.

The German branch of the cosmetics retailer Body Shop will not be closing any stores for the time being, despite the firm's bankruptcy, DPAInternational.com reported. "We are not thinking about closing any stores at the moment," the company's provisional insolvency administrator, Biner Bähr, told dpa on Friday. Business operations will continue as normal for the more than 400 employees in the 63 stores in the country, Bähr said. Body Shop filed for insolvency in Germany two weeks ago.

Bankrupt Brazilian airline Gol received U.S. court approval on Wednesday for a $1 billion loan, after resolving the concerns of a group of lenders that feared they would be sidelined by the new loan, Reuters reported. Gol had previously proposed borrowing $950 million in bankruptcy, but it allowed the objecting lenders to kick in an additional $50 million on the new loan and receive interest on that new debt, Gol's attorney Justin Cunningham said at a hearing in Manhattan.

Corporate insolvencies could climb 10 percent this year Allianz has warned, stating the U.K. is more exposed than other European nations to a spike in business insolvencies, CityAM reported. The insurer’s global insolvency outlook estimated 15 percent of small and medium-sized businesses in the U.K. are at risk of going bust, the highest proportion of “fragile firms” in Europe. This compared to 14 percent in France, nine percent in Italy and seven percent in Germany.