A top arranger for Chinese junk dollar bonds says that a type of filing under the US bankruptcy code will play an important role for China’s distressed developers to restructure debt, buying them time to pay back creditors until markets recover, Bloomberg news reported. About 10 Chinese real estate companies could use so-called schemes of arrangement to restructure debt in a holistic fashion this year, Chen Yi, head of global capital markets at Haitong International Securities Group Ltd., said in an interview.

The British government came under pressure on Monday to set out plans immediately to support families through a mounting cost of living crisis, with a leading business group and former prime minister saying a political vacuum cannot be allowed to last, Reuters reported. The Bank of England warned on Thursday a long recession was on its way as energy prices surge to unprecedented levels, pushing inflation to a 40-year high of 9.4% in June and leaving many households on the brink of economic hardship.

Brexit-related regulatory burdens impacted more than half of medium-sized businesses in the Republic in 2020, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), the Irish Times reported. The agency’s latest Global Value Chain participation survey found that 54 per cent of businesses here with 50 or more employees were hit by new regulations arising from the UK’s EU exit. Despite the red tape, the UK remained the most popular location for Irish businesses for both global purchasing and supplying of goods/materials and services.

Britain's accounting watchdog said on Monday it had fined auditor PwC 1.75 million pounds ($2.12 million) after it failed to properly challenge UK telecoms group BT once a half-a-billion pound fraud was discovered in BT's Italian operations, Reuters reported. BT's full-year financial statement for the year ended March 31, 2017, had to be adjusted by 513 million pounds due to the fraud, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) said.

Insurers would potentially be able to use billions of pounds of expected gains from a relaxation of capital rules for share buybacks and to pay dividends, under plans by both candidates to succeed Boris Johnson as UK prime minister, Bloomberg News reported. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak have both said overhauling Solvency II capital requirements, a legacy of the UK’s European Union membership, is a key part of a drive to boost the UK’s competitiveness.

A London judge has told Kazakh mining company ENRC, its former legal adviser Dechert and the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to consider mediation to end bitter litigation over events that led to a near 10-year criminal investigation, Reuters reported. Despite ruling in May that former veteran Dechert partner Neil Gerrard had grossly betrayed his own client and former senior SFO officers had behaved with bad faith, High Court Judge David Waksman suggested all sides call a truce. "Notwithstanding what's happened in the past and the serious allegations ...

The Bank of England raised interest rates by half a percentage point on Thursday, the largest jump since 1995, as policymakers strengthened their efforts to tackle inflation even as they warned Britain was heading into a long recession later this year, the New York Times reported. The bank raised rates to 1.75 percent, the highest since 2008, from 1.25 percent as it forecast the annual rate of inflation would climb above 13 percent when household energy bills jump higher in October. That would be the highest level of inflation in 42 years.

Rising energy and fuel bills are driving growing numbers of UK companies into insolvency, as firms struggle to cope with higher costs, supply and staff shortages, and the withdrawal of Covid support packages from the government, the Guardian reported. Corporate insolvencies in England and Wales jumped by more than 80% in the past quarter from a year earlier, while the number of firms opting to be liquidated hit the highest level in at least six decades. They accounted for almost nine in 10 of the total.

The Bank of England says it will act forcefully if needed to stop the surge in inflation from turning into a long-term problem, meaning it could deliver a rare half-percentage point interest rate rise as soon as this week, Reuters reported. Here are some of the things that Governor Andrew Bailey and his colleagues will be looking as they assess the persistence of inflation pressures ahead of their next scheduled monetary policy announcement at 1100 GMT on Thursday. Measures of inflation expectations and prices charged by companies have slowed recently but core pay has risen.

Corporate insolvency numbers in Scotland increased by 49.1% from the same time last year with 243 insolvencies in the last quarter, Accountancy Daily reported. This figure was up from 163 in the first quarter of the year with personal insolvencies rising by 8.1% over the same period. Corporate insolvencies include compulsory liquidations, creditors’ voluntary liquidations, and receivership appointments. Compulsory liquidations rose by 37.5% between Q1 2021 and Q1 2022 Creditors’ voluntary liquidations increased by 51.9% in the same period.