British government debt rose to the highest level in almost 60 years last month and retail sales slumped, underscoring the scale of the economic challenges facing whoever replaces Prime Minister Liz Truss after her administration imploded under the weight of its failed financial plan, the Associated Press reported. Public borrowing rose to 98% of economic output in September as rampant inflation increased interest payments on what the government owed, the Office for National Statistics said Friday.

Liz Truss said on Thursday she would resign as prime minister, brought down by her economic programme that sent shockwaves through the markets and divided her Conservative Party just six weeks after she was appointed, Reuters reported. A leadership election will be completed within the next week to replace Truss, who is the shortest serving prime minister in Britain's history. George Canning previously held the record, serving 119 days in 1827, when he died.

The UK Treasury is set to transfer more than £11 billion ($12.4 billion) to the Bank of England this fiscal year to cover projected losses in its bond-buying program, Bloomberg News reported. The capital transfer was detailed in an update to the “Central Government Supply Estimates” published on Tuesday by the Treasury. The new £11.175 billion injection is listed under “assistance to financial institutions - payment to the Bank of England.” Parliament is set to debate the contents of the statement on Monday. The BOE is to begin unwinding its quantitative easing program next month.

British food prices rose at the fastest pace since 1980 last month, driving inflation back to a 40-year high and heaping pressure on the embattled government to balance the books without gutting help for the nation’s poorest residents, the Associated Press reported. Food prices jumped 14.6% in the year through September, led by the soaring cost of staples such as meat, bread, milk and eggs, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday. That pushed consumer price inflation back to 10.1%, the highest since early 1982 and equal to the level last reached in July.

A surge in bad loans awaits UK banks as higher interest rates saddle homeowners with an estimated £52 billion ($58.6 billion) of added mortgage payments over the next three years, an analyst warned as he downgraded his ratings on several lenders, Reuters reported. The jump in costs will help push the personal debt service burden toward about 10% of post-tax income and further into the “dangerous territory” traditionally associated with large increases in impairments, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Ed Firth wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.

A plan to give the British government power to override watchogs would raise "serious concerns" about the ability of regulators to oversee the City as a global financial centre, Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. While Britain remains home to Europe's biggest financial sector after its exit from the European Union, banks are keen for regulators to help boost the City's global competitiveness.

The Bank of England on Tuesday said liability-driven investment funds were now better prepared to manage shocks like the one triggered by September's mini budget, and the risk of another "fire sale" dynamic in gilts had been significantly reduced, Reuters reported. "Taken as a whole, LDI funds are now significantly better prepared to manage shocks of this nature in the future," BoE Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said in a letter parliament's Treasury Select Committee.

Britain's new finance minister Jeremy Hunt scrapped Prime Minister Liz Truss's economic plan and scaled back her vast energy support scheme on Monday, making a historic policy U-turn to try to stem a dramatic loss of investor confidence, Reuters reported. Truss's spokesman denied that Hunt was running the country after his new strategy sent the pound soaring and helped government bond prices start to recover from the rout that followed her government's Sept. 23 plan for unfunded tax cuts.

Corporate insolvencies in the UK rose 16% in September compared to a year earlier as experts warn more firms will fold under the pressure of weak consumer demand and rising borrowing costs, Bloomberg News reported. The Insolvency Service said Friday that 1,679 companies registered for insolvency last month, up from 1,453 in September 2021. It was a reprieve from August when insolvencies shot up 43% on an annual basis. Still, companies face a tough winter amid Britain’s cost-of-living crisis and increasing interest rates.

Kwasi Kwarteng was thrown out as Chancellor of the Exchequer after just 38 days, but he spent more than a decade promoting his small-state, low-tax vision for the UK that proved his downfall -- and which may still cost Prime Minister Liz Truss her job as well, Bloomberg News reported. Neighbors in southeast London and allies in book-writing before rising through government to the two most powerful positions in British politics, Truss on Friday jettisoned Kwarteng, 47, in a desperate bid to save her premiership.