London's marine insurance market has widened the area in the Red Sea it deems as high risk after a surge in attacks on commercial ships, according to a statement issued on Monday, Reuters reported. Guidance from the Joint War Committee (JWC), which comprises syndicate members from the Lloyd's Market Association (LMA) and representatives from the London insurance company market, is watched closely and influences underwriters' considerations over insurance premiums. The JWC widened the high risk zone in the Red Sea to 18 degrees north from 15 degrees north previously, the statement said.

The number of companies in England and Wales declared insolvent in November was 21% higher than a year earlier, government figures showed on Friday, adding to the pattern of higher corporate failures as the Bank of England raises interest rates, Reuters reported. The Insolvency Service, a public body, said there were 2,466 registered company insolvencies during the month. The BoE raised rates 14 times between December 2021 and August this year, taking Bank Rate from 0.1% to 5.25%.

Ministers will announce a 6.5% increase in the funding for local councils in England in a desperate attempt to stop them going bankrupt, the Guardian reported. Michael Gove, the communities secretary, will announce the £64bn support package on Monday, less than a fortnight after he was warned that an unprecedented number of councils are likely to declare themselves bankrupt.

A council in one of the wealthiest parts of the UK has warned it faces potential bankruptcy due to the “devastating” impact of cancelling the northern leg of HS2, the Guardian reported. Leaders of Cheshire East council in north-west England said the authority had spent £11m preparing for the high-speed rail link, and this would now have to be written off. Most of this money – £8.6m – had been funded by borrowing and would now have to be funded from the council’s already stretched revenue budget.

Britain's payments regulator on Wednesday provisionally proposed a cap on cross-border interchange fees on retailers and other businesses charged by Mastercard (MA.N) and Visa (V.N) on transactions made between the UK and European single market, Reuters reported. The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) said a cap would protect businesses from overpaying, after it published interim findings of a market review on interchange fees charged since Brexit, when the bloc's longstanding cap ceased to apply in Britain.

The City of London, Britain’s historic financial district, is awash with construction, the intensity of which is not expected to let up soon, the New York Times reported. The City of London Corporation, the district’s governing body, has approved 10 new office towers, including one that will exceed the height of all others in the area, known locally as the Square Mile. Altogether, more than five million square feet of office space is under construction, with another five million square feet in the pipeline.

U.K. wage growth slowed at the sharpest pace in almost two years, a further sign that the labor market is cooling in response to a flagging economy, Bloomberg News reported. Average earnings excluding bonuses rose 7.3% in the three months through October compared with a year ago, the Office for National Statistics said Tuesday. That’s down from an upwardly revised 7.8% in the period through September. Economists had expected a figure of 7.4%.

The UK government has drawn up a “watch list” of local authorities that are on the brink of financial collapse and acknowledged that a funding shortfall is causing “significant” strain on many councils, Bloomberg News reported. Michael Gove, the UK’s secretary of state for leveling up, distanced the central government from the growing crisis after cuts to real terms funding for councils since 2010, saying that the troubles were largely linked to mismanagement. The remarks follow findings from the Local Government Association that one in five councils are on the brink of going bust.

Britain's data protection watchdog warned companies to consider people's privacy rights whenever they use artificial intelligence (AI), or face not just fines but losing the public's trust in the technology, Reuters reported. The country's Information Commissioner, John Edwards, said at a speech on Wednesday that companies must protect their customer's personal information in all circumstances when they are using AI. "You cannot expect to utilise AI in your products or services without considering privacy, data protection and how you will safeguard people’s rights," Edwards said.