Thousands of jobs are at risk at Wilko Ltd. after the British low-cost retailer signaled it was at risk of insolvency proceedings due to “mounting cash pressures,” Bloomberg News reported. The privately-owned chain, which sells everything from stationery to hardware, has filed notice of its intention to appoint administrators at the UK’s High Court, following weeks hunting for a rescue deal. Wilko, which has 400 shops and employs about 12,000 people, started from a single hardware store in 1930.

Robert Bull, the majority owner of British bungalow giant RoyaleLife, saw his public profile reach new heights this year when he entered The Sunday Times Rich List for the first time. In a piece to accompany his entry, Bull, 46, told of how he had become bankrupt in 2016, but had since recovered to build a £4-billion ($5.1 billion) business that specializes in selling pre-fabricated dwellings to over-45s. His net worth was estimated by The Sunday Times at around £1.9 billion. The actions of an alleged gangster could threaten all of that.

Cineworld Group said it has emerged from chapter 11 bankruptcy after nearly 11 months, coming out with lower debt and a new slate of management and board, Reuters reported. The world's second largest cinema chain operator behind AMC Entertainment said it has appointed former Chair and CEO of Warner Bros Ann Sarnoff to its board, along with four other members to join new Chairman Eric Foss and CEO Eduardo Acuna. The movie chain operator and owner of brands such as Regal, Cinema City, Picturehouse and Planet had filed for U.S. bankruptcy in early September to restructure its massive debt.

British home prices fell further last month as borrowing costs held back demand, one of the largest mortgage lenders said, although the rate of decline showed a chance that the market could yet avoid a hard landing, Bloomberg News reported. The Nationwide Building Society said prices fell 3.8% in its July survey from a year ago, quicker than a 3.5% drop in the previous month. While economists expected a slightly larger decline of 4%, it was the third straight month that prices had fallen at their fastest pace since the global financial crisis in 2009.

Britain's banks and building societies have until the end of August to justify to regulators why some of their savings rates are low or face sanctions, the markets watchdog said on Monday, as Bank of England rates look set to rise to their highest since 2008, Reuters reported. While the sector has been passing on higher interest rates rapidly to mortgage customers, lawmakers have criticised lenders for not upping rates on savings worth around 1.5 trillion pounds ($1.9 trillion) at a similar speed, amid a cost-of-living crisis.

Nigel Farage, who helped mobilize the pro-Brexit vote in 2016, was marginalized in Britain, then consumed by the pandemic. No longer: For three weeks, Mr. Farage, has been back on the front pages of British papers, with an attention-grabbing claim that his exclusive private bank, Coutts, dropped him as a customer because of his polarizing politics. Early on Wednesday, after Farage’s allegations were largely vindicated, the chief executive of his bank’s parent, NatWest Group, resigned after she admitted improperly discussing his bank account with a BBC journalist.

The Bank of England forecast on Tuesday that it would make a net loss of just over 150 billion pounds ($193 billion) over the next 10 years as it unwinds its quantitative easing (QE) gilt purchases, up from 100 billion pounds projected in April, Reuters reported. That loss will need to be funded by the government, at a time when public finances are already under pressure from rising interest rates and inflation, and members of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party want tax cuts before a likely 2024 election.

City AM, the London-based business newspaper, is close to calling in administrators after a weeks-long search for a buyer failed to produce a solvent deal, SkyNews.com reported. Sky News has learnt that the directors of the title's parent company are preparing to appoint BDO, the accountancy firm, to commence an insolvency process in the coming days.

A proposed 2.7 billion pound ($3.5 billion) mass lawsuit against major banks including JPMorgan and Citigroup over alleged foreign exchange rigging was revived by a London court on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The case was originally brought by Phillip Evans, a former inquiry chair at Britain's Competition Markets Authority, on behalf of thousands of asset managers, pension funds and financial institutions.

Britain's data regulator said on Tuesday it will examine Worldcoin, a project by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman where users provide their iris scans in exchange for a digital identification and free cryptocurrency, Reuters reported. "We note the launch of WorldCoin in the UK and will be making further enquiries," a spokesperson for the Information Commissioner's Office told Reuters. Worldcoin launched on Monday with two million users from its trial, with the crypto project scaling up eyeball-scanning operations in 20 countries, including at sites in London.