The government dropped its pursuit of five former Carillion non-executive directors late last week, hours before a High Court “test case” was due to begin. The Insolvency Service had been seeking disqualification orders that would have prevented five former board members of the construction group, including Philip Green, the long-serving chairman, from acting as directors, but it dropped the civil action on Friday afternoon. A 13-week trial had been due to begin yesterday.

The Bank of England is reviewing its rules that determine when international banks are required to set up a formal subsidiary after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank showed it was easier to seize control of such operations in the event a bank fails, Bloomberg News reported. Silicon Valley Bank operated as a branch in the UK for a decade before regulators finally required it to subsidiarise, Sam Woods, chief executive officer of the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority, said in prepared remarks during the City Banquet at Mansion House.

Britain and South Korea have agreed to extend a period of low or zero tariffs on bilateral trade of products with parts from the European Union, the British government said on Monday, in a boost for the car industry, Reuters reported. Without the two-year extension, British businesses would have faced high tariffs from Jan. 1 on exports of products made using EU components, under so-called rules of origin, and on products shipped via the EU.

A key unit of collapsed UK caravan giant RoyaleLife was placed into administration this week, as a fight heats up among debtors owed hundreds of millions of pounds, Bloomberg News reported. Time GB Group Limited is one of around 200 companies that make up RoyaleLife, a group that was owned and founded by self-proclaimed billionaire Robert Bull, but has now mostly collapsed into insolvency. The firm acted as a treasury company for RoyaleLife, undertaking money transfers across the group, and is the closest thing the caravan giant had to a corporate center.

Big banks in Britain are preparing for any future escalation of Western sanctions on China and have shared their "scenario planning" with the British and U.S. governments, a senior banking official has told Reuters. The project involves sharing lessons learned from other sanctions frameworks, including those on Russia, and discussions about the effect any measures imposed on China might have, Neil Whiley, director of sanctions at lobby group UK Finance, said.

Metro Bank Holdings Plc said it has secured sufficient consent from its bondholders to extend its senior debt and restructure its junior notes as part of a rescue deal agreed over the weekend, Bloomberg News reported. The UK challenger bank has received support from holders of over 75% in value of both its senior and junior notes, potentially making the deal binding for all creditors, according to a statement on Wednesday.

Deutsche Bank AG squared off against the U.S. parent company of Lehman Brothers in a London court this week, hoping to squeeze more money from obscure notes issued by the long-dead bank’s U.K. arm, Bloomberg News reported. The German lender argued that it should be paid money recovered from the U.K. unit ahead of the company’s U.S. parent. Deutsche Bank is leading the case as a holder of a certain type of junior security issued from Lehman’s European unit.

Britain's financial regulator on Tuesday said it was stopping peer-to-peer platform rebuildingsociety.com from approving financial promotions for Binance and other crypto asset firms, days after Binance announced it had partnered with the company, Reuters reported. Cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which is unregulated in Britain, in a blog post on Sunday said it had launched a new domain for UK users and that rebuildingsociety.com would be approving its marketing and communications materials.

Metro Bank, an upstart British lender, said on Sunday that it has raised 325 million pounds, or $395 million, in new capital to help ease regulators’ worries about its financial health, the New York Times reported. The deal, put together after days of negotiations, is meant to help stabilize what was one of the first of Britain’s so-called challenger banks, created to take on incumbents like HSBC and Barclays. Founded in 2010 by an American banking veteran, Vernon Hill, Metro was the first new mainstream bank in Britain in over a century.

A cash-strapped council in the United Kingdom has cancelled its Christmas lights in a battle against bankruptcy, YahooFinance.com reported. Medway Council in Kent announced on Monday that there will be no lights or switch-on events in five of its towns. The decision comes just weeks after a financial report warned it is "very likely" the council will face bankruptcy. It said the move to call off Christmas in Gillingham, Rochester, Strood, Rainham and Chatham will save the council £75,000.