The $10 billion takeover battle for British supermarket group Morrisons between two U.S. private equity groups looks set to be decided by a rarely used auction process, Reuters reported. Morrisons said on Wednesday that it was in talks with Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R), Fortress Investment Group and Britain's takeover regulator about an auction to settle its future. Last month, Morrisons agreed a 7 billion pound ($9.6 billion) offer from CD&R, which has former Tesco boss Terry Leahy as a senior adviser.

Credit Suisse Group AG said it made a $400 million payment to investors in its supply-chain finance funds that invested in Greensill products, its fourth such disbursement to clients hit by the liquidation, Bloomberg News reported. The Aug. 6 payment takes the total paid to investors in the funds to about $5.9 billion, according to an updated Q&A on the bank’s website on Tuesday. The funds’ total cash position is about $7 billion, or about 70% of assets under management when they were suspended, it said. The Aug.

August saw the lowest figure for proposed job cuts for seven years, despite the imminent end of the government's furlough scheme, BBC.com reported. Figures published by the Insolvency Service show that British employers planned 12,687 job cuts in August, a fall of 11% since July. The data suggests that the predicted surge in unemployment this autumn may be smaller than expected. At the height of the pandemic, firms proposed over 150,000 job cuts a month. Employers planning to make 20 or more staff redundant have to notify the Insolvency Service when they start the process.

UK music tech startup Roli has filed for bankruptcy and will reform, Digital Music News reported. The company says its niche target market and the coronavirus pandemic forced a reset. Both Pharrell and Grimes backed the British music startup. some Roli products will live on through Luminary, which is rising from the ashes of the Roli bankruptcy. CEO and Founder Roland Lamb raised £5 million to launch the rebooted company, Luminary. Roli’s 70 employees will shift to the new business, which closed $6.85 million in initial funding from Hoxton Ventures.

Two furloughed jumbo jet pilots and a burnt-out finance worker have been among the more unusual candidates to learn how to drive 44-tonne trucks at Laurence Bolton's school in south London during the pandemic, Reuters reported. "You get people from all industries, and think: 'Blimey, I never saw you here before 2020'," Bolton said. "There are more people that have been displaced from retail, with the high street closing or certainly running down, and from hospitality." Business is brisk for truck driving schools as Britain emerges from its COVID-19 crisis.

Credit Suisse Group AG’s London legal battle with Sanjeev Gupta was delayed by another six months, as the metals tycoon continues to seek funding for his empire, Bloomberg News reported. An initial hearing over the bank’s attempt to push some of Gupta’s companies into insolvency has been rescheduled to March by consent between the parties, a court official said by email. Earlier this year, the Swiss lender, through Citibank, filed “winding-up petitions” against a number of companies in Gupta’s GFG Alliance Group, including Liberty Commodities Ltd.

The Financial Reporting Council has issued a formal complaint against KPMG and several of its current and former employees for allegedly providing “false and misleading information” relating to its audits of the outsourcing firms Carillion and Regenersis, The Guardian reported. The accounting watchdog’s allegations of misconduct relate to documents provided to the FRC during its inspection of audits carried out on Carillion in 2016 and Regenersis in 2014.

It began as a market stall in West Yorkshire, selling eggs and butter just before the turn of the 20th century. Today that market stall is Morrisons, Britain’s fourth-largest supermarket chain, with nearly 500 stores and the prize in a 7 billion-pound ($9.6 billion) bidding war between American private equity groups. It is a financial drama that is playing out almost weekly in Britain: A domestic company is courted and snapped up by, most likely, private equity investors awash with cash, the New York Times reported.

U.K. mortgage approvals fell for a second month in July but remained well above pre-pandemic levels, suggesting demand for property is holding up despite the tapering of a tax break on purchases, Bloomberg News reported. Banks and building societies authorized 75,152 home loans, the least in a year and down from 80,272 in June, the Bank of England said Tuesday.

Fugitive Indian businessman Vijay Mallya has filed papers in the UK high court seeking permission to appeal against his bankruptcy order, the Times of India reported. Mallya was declared bankrupt by the insolvency and companies court (ICC) of the high court on July 26 this year. His name is now listed in the individual insolvency register. A spokesman for the chancery division of the high court told TOI that Mallya had on August 16 filed a notice seeking permission to appeal the decision of Chief ICC judge Briggs, who had declared him bankrupt.