A city council has said it will have to effectively declare bankruptcy if its application for emergency government help is refused, BBC.com reported. Southampton City Council said that it had ended efforts to meet a £39m budget shortfall for 2024-25 on its own.

The U.K.’s competition regulator said it has launched an investigation into whether eight housebuilders have shared commercially sensitive information with their competitors, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Competition and Markets Authority said Monday that it will investigate Barratt Developments, Bellway, Berkeley, Bloor Homes, Persimmon, Redrow, Taylor Wimpey and Vistry. So far, the CMA hasn’t reached any conclusions as to whether or not competition law has been infringed, it said Monday.

The pace of a sales decline for British retailers eased in February and a measure of inflation dropped to its weakest in nearly three years, according to industry figures which echoed official data published earlier this month, Reuters reported. The Confederation of British Industry's (CBI) monthly retail sales balance, a gauge of sales versus a year ago, rose to -7 from -50 in January, the slowest fall in 10 months. But retailers expected the decline in sales to pick up slightly in March to -15.

Stakeholders in the UK’s biggest pub operator are gearing up for talks on how to address its more than £2 billion ($2.5 billion) in debt coming due next year, Bloomberg News reported. Stonegate Pub Co., its owner TDR Capital and its senior and junior creditors will discuss how to tackle the upcoming debt maturities. The company and its sponsor have brought in bankers at Evercore Inc and lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis LLP to advise on their options. Stonegate could slash a part of its debt and then address the remainder, creditors say.

A U.S. judge said that Barclays must face part of a proposed class action by shareholders over the British bank's sale of $17.7 billion more debt than regulators had allowed, Reuters reported. U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla in Manhattan said that shareholders adequately alleged that Barclays' failure to disclose the absence of internal controls to catch the error was a material omission of fact.

Argentina must pay a large deposit in a case brought by hedge funds seeking $1.5 billion in compensation for losses in the nation’s growth-linked securities, London’s Court of Appeal ruled, Bloomberg News reported. The South American nation must pay down €310 million ($337 million) before a full appeal is heard. Hedge funds, including Palladian Partners LP, won the case for compensation in a lower court last year. Argentina has until April 5 to deposit the cash in a trustee account, a judge ruled Thursday.

A city council has warned it is being forced into “tough” decisions to avoid following others into effective bankruptcy, BBC.com reported. Although Newcastle City is not at imminent risk of going under, proposals to cut spending by another £15m over the next year have been signed off by the Labour-run authority's cabinet.

Bank of England chief economist Huw Pill said on Friday that so far he had seen only "quite modest and tentative evidence" that inflation would fall back to and stay at the central bank's 2% target, due to strong underlying domestic price pressures, Reuters reported. "I do think that we will have to wait several more months before we can be convinced that the squeezing out of the persistent component of inflation is there," Pill said at a panel discussion hosted by the United States' National Association for Business Economics.

British retail sales jumped by the most in almost three years in January as consumers recovered their appetite for spending, suggesting the economy could emerge quickly from its recession in the second half of last year, Reuters reported. Sales volumes increased by 3.4% from December, much stronger than the median forecast of a 1.5% increase in a Reuters poll of economists. anuary's jump was the biggest since April 2021 and followed a 3.3% fall in December.

Britain's economy fell into a recession in the second half of 2023, a tough backdrop ahead of this year's expected election for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who has promised to boost growth, Reuters reported. Gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 0.3% in the three months to December, having shrunk by 0.1% between July and September, official data showed. Sterling weakened against the dollar and the euro. Investors added to their bets on the Bank of England (BoE) cutting interest rates this year and businesses called for more help from the government in a budget plan due on March 6.