It's only a matter of time before a Welsh council goes bankrupt unless cash pressures ease, bosses have said, the BBC reported. Anthony Hunt, Labour leader of Torfaen council, said "the very fabric of our local public services is under threat". And Mark Pritchard, independent leader of Wrexham council, said that it faced cutting community care help that would have a negative impact on NHS services. The Welsh government said that it would continue to work closely with councils to "meet the shared challenges". "We are struggling," said Mr Pritchard. "A local authority across Wales....

Britain's pharmaceutical industry and the government have agreed terms to renew a medicines access scheme that requires the companies to pay back part of their drug revenue generated from the national health service, they said on Monday, Reuters reported. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) said in a joint statement that the scheme agreed with the government and National Health Service (NHS) England, will run for five years until end-2028.

Three Bank of England policy makers warned markets to brace for UK interest rates to remain elevated for a lengthy period of time, the latest efforts by officials to dampen bets on a reduction in borrowing costs by mid-2024, Bloomberg News reported. Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden said firms must adapt to a higher rate world after the shift away from the low borrowing costs that marked the post-global financial crisis period.

Inflation in Britain slowed last month, bringing the rate to its lowest level in two years, in a welcome easing of stubborn price pressures, the New York Times reported. Consumer prices rose 4.6 percent in October from a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday, down from 6.7 percent in the previous month. Last year, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made wholesale energy prices soar, but price caps on bills in Britain meant that households felt these increases with a lag. The same has been true as wholesale prices have dropped this year.

A U.K. city council facing a £23 million in-year budget gap has said that it could declare bankruptcy if it is not feasible to balance its books, the Darlington & Stockton Times reported. Nottingham City Council has said that while it is “not ‘bankrupt’ or insolvent”, it will need to assess whether it can deliver a balanced budget. It comes after concerns that the council will follow the likes of Birmingham and others in issuing a Section 114 notice, meaning a council is effectively bankrupt.

The number of firms going bust in England and Wales has jumped yet again as the higher-for-longer interest rate environment continues to put pressure on businesses and consumers. Monthly data from the Insolvency Service showed there were 2,315 insolvencies among registered companies in October, up 18 percent from last October when there was 1,954, City AM reported. Around 82 percent (1,889) of last month’s insolvencies were creditors’ voluntary liquidations (CVLs), where an insolvent company’s directors choose to wind up.

London boroughs have spent about £300 million ($367 million) since the start of 2017 buying properties outside their local area for homeless people, a sign of the deep-rooted problems that are leaving councils around the country at risk of bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Cash-strapped local authorities have acquired more than 1,000 of those homes as soaring rents push more Londoners to crisis point, and historic policies erode the supply of housing that councils have to offer. The figures were released to Bloomberg News under the Freedom of Information Act.

In 1868, a British lawyer set up the first investment trust to pool together small sums of money to buy bonds issued by nations from Turkey to Egypt. A century and a half later, the sector it spawned — closed-end funds traded on stock exchanges — is now worth about £260 billion ($318 billion). It enjoyed a boom in the era of record-low interest rates, more than doubling in size, with a simple pitch: high yields for the masses. But now, central bank interest rates and bond yields are at multi-year highs and have ripped through markets around the world, Bloomberg News reported.

The British economy flatlined in the third quarter, entering what is expected to be a protracted period of stagnation on the cusp of a recession, the New York Times reported. Gross domestic product recorded no growth in July to September compared with the previous quarter, when it grew 0.2 percent. The economy was 0.6 percent larger in the third quarter than a year ago, when many businesses closed for the state funeral for Queen Elizabeth II, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday.

The Bank of England said on Friday it would start the second leg to its first system-wide stress test of how banks, insurers, pension schemes and clearing houses collectively cope with shocks involving interest rates and risky asset prices over 10 days, Reuters reported. The BoE announced in June it was launching its first sector-wide stress test or system-wide exploratory scenario (SWES), kicking off with information-gathering from over 50 firms.