Britain’s inflation rate hit a new 40-year high of 9.1% in the 12 months to May, figures showed Wednesday, as Russia’s war in Ukraine drove food and fuel prices ever higher, the Associated Press reported. The Office for National Statistics said consumer price inflation rose slightly from 9% in April, itself the highest level since 1982.

Katie Price has seemingly swerved bankruptcy proceedings for a third time this year, with her court case reportedly being moved to February 2023, the Daily Mirror reported. The 43-year-old former glamour model was due to face a judge over the £3.2million bankruptcy debts she has but the hearing, which was reportedly meant to have taken place at London’s Royal Courts of Justice on June 7, has now been pushed back into next year.

Britain's payment systems regulator (PSR) will conduct two market reviews of card fees charged by Visa and Mastercard, the U.S. companies that account for 99% of debit and credit card payments in the UK, Reuters reported. The PSR's announcement yesterday follows heavy pressure from lawmakers to launch full market reviews to tackle card fees paid by retailers, which are typically passed on to consumers. "We want to understand whether card payments are working well and to make sure that merchants, and ultimately consumers, get a good deal," said Natalie Timan, the PSR's head of strategy.

The British government presented legislation Monday that would allow it to tear up parts of its Brexit agreement with the European Union, stoking fears of a trade war and drawing condemnation from the trade bloc, the Wall Street Journal reported. U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said that the legislation put before Parliament enables the government to unilaterally alter the terms of a 2019 deal with its European counterparts that placed a customs border within the U.K., between Britain and Northern Ireland.

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority has put Credit Suisse on a watchlist of institutions in need of stricter supervision, the Financial Times reported late on Sunday, citing a letter sent in May, Reuters reported. The regulator told the Swiss bank last month the step had been taken because of concern the bank had not made enough improvements to its culture, governance and risk controls, the report said.

Britain's economy faces stagnation next year and could easily fall into recession, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) warned on Monday after it slashed its outlook for growth due to surging inflation, Reuters reported. The CBI is the third major body to cut its growth forecasts for Britain in the past week, following a downgrade from the British Chambers of Commerce and a warning from the OECD that Britain had the weakest outlook of any major economy bar Russia. "Let me be clear – we're expecting the economy to be pretty much stagnant. It won't take much to tip us into a recession.

Credit Suisse Group AG won the green light to pursue its court battle against companies controlled by Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, in a dispute over more than a billion dollars in debts to the bank, Bloomberg News reported. A London judge said that the Swiss lender’s attempt to wind up three of Gupta’s firms can proceed, saying the GFG companies couldn’t rely on rules designed to protect companies during the coronavirus pandemic. “The demands made on the companies over a year ago have not been met,” Judge Nicholas Briggs said in his ruling.

The Financial Reporting Council fined PricewaterhouseCoopers on Tuesday after the U.K. audit and accounting regulator found issues with the firm’s audits of two construction groups, the Wall Street Journal reported. The FRC said it imposed sanctions of roughly £5 million—equivalent to about $6.3 million—for failings in PwC’s audits of Galliford Try Holdings PLC and Kier Group PLC, which have market caps of around £191 million and £345 million, respectively. PwC in a statement expressed regret that certain audits weren’t up to standards and said it has worked to improve audit quality.

Relocating euro clearing from London to the European Union must be "market-led" rather than mandatory, with the shift already well underway, the head of Eurex Clearing said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. After Brexit, the European Union has said it will not allow EU market participants to clear euro derivatives in London after June 2025, citing a need to end its heavy reliance on that market in the same way the bloc is cutting dependency on Russian energy.

Britain will begin live testing of crypto blockchain technology for traditional market activities such as trading and settlement of stocks and bonds next year as part of a drive to become a global "crypto hub", the finance ministry said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Gwyneth Nurse, the ministry's director general for financial services, said the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT), which underpins cryptoassets, is a key priority for making financial market infrastructure more innovative and efficient for users.