There is intensifying pressure on Britain’s government to do more to help struggling households, with the country’s shadow finance minister warning of a “mortgage catastrophe” as millions are pushed to the brink of insolvency, CNBC.com reported. The Bank of England last week hiked interest rates by 50 basis points to 5%, a bigger increase than many had expected. The BOE’s 13th consecutive rate rise takes the base rate to the highest level since 2008.

For decades, one fashion accessory was more synonymous with Britain’s most famous music festival, Glastonbury, than any other: Hunter Wellington boots, the New York Times reported. Paparazzi photographs of the likes of Kate Moss, Cara Delevingne and Alexa Chung wearing their Hunters in the early aughts propelled what were once functional footwear favorites of country life into cool style statements with broad global appeal.

Newcastle United co-owner Amanda Staveley has been plunged into a multimillion-pound bankruptcy row with a Greek shipping tycoon, The Telegraph reported. Ms Staveley, who helped Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund acquire the Premier League club in 2021, has asked the High Court to prevent shipping magnate Victor Restis from forcing her into bankruptcy, new filings reveal. Mr Restis claims Ms Staveley has failed to repay a loan of more than £35m that dates back to over a decade.

The Bank of England raised interest rates by a bigger-than-expected half a percentage point on Thursday after it said there had been "significant" news suggesting British inflation would take longer to fall, Reuters reported. The BoE's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted 7-2 to raise its main interest rate to 5% from 4.5%, its highest since 2008 and its largest rate increase since February, following stickier inflation and wage growth since its policymakers met last in May.

Britain’s inflation rate held steady in May, frustrating expectations that price increases would slow down, according to data released Wednesday, the day before the country’s central bank is widely expected to raise interest rates again, the New York Times reported. Consumer prices rose 8.7 percent from a year earlier, the same as in April, the Office for National Statistics said. Economists had forecast it would dip slightly.

Bedlam in Britain's 1.5 trillion-pound ($1.9 trillion) mortgage market, fuelled by ructions in money markets, threatens to trigger a renewed slump in housing activity and financial pain for homeowners on a par with the late 1980s, Reuters reported. Lenders have repeatedly re-priced and pulled home loan offerings in recent weeks in a scramble to keep up with soaring funding costs, spurred by expectations for more interest rate hikes from the Bank of England as it battles stubbornly high inflation.

With U.K. economic data this week suggesting that the Bank of England has a lot more to do to get inflation under control, the yield spread of sterling investment-grade bonds over their dollar peers has been widening fast, Bloomberg News reported. A 21 basis point jump this week took the spread to the widest since October, when the UK market was recovering from the turmoil caused by then-Prime Minister Liz Truss’s ill-fated budget. The indexes have a one-day lag.

The Bank of England was the first of the world’s major central banks to start raising interest rates to tackle the post-pandemic inflation surge. Money markets are betting it may be the last to stop, Bloomberg News reported. Strong labor-market figures on Tuesday sparked big moves in bond markets, with yields jumping to the highest since 2008. Alongside that, traders dramatically reassessed the UK rate outlook and are now pricing a more than one-in-three chance that the BOE will lift its benchmark to 6% by early next year.

One of Britain’s biggest delivery companies has crashed into administration, putting most of its 2,300 employees out of work and threatening major disruption to thousands of businesses that depend on it, the Telegraph reported. Sheffield-headquartered Tuffnells, founded in 1914 after Harold Tuffnell bought a horse and cart for £100 and began delivering goods, has appointed insolvency specialists from professional services company Interpath to handle its bankruptcy after failing to find new owners for the business.

A second Canary Wharf office block in as many weeks has collapsed into a form of insolvency amid growing financial pressure on commercial property owners, Sky News reported. Sky News understands that Alvarez & Marsal, the restructuring firm, has been appointed as fixed charge receiver over the shares of Cheung Loong Holdings Limited, which indirectly owns the long leasehold of 20 Canada Square. The building has for years been home to BP's oil trading division, while the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's has been among its other tenants.