U.K. food prices are rising at their fastest pace since August 2020, figures from data firm Kantar suggest, as supply chain disruption continues, BBC.com reported. Grocery inflation rose to 2.1% in October - the highest rate since last year, when retailers were cutting promotions amid the Covid pandemic. Last week, the Bank of England confounded market expectations by holding interest rates. But with overall inflation heading for about 5%, a rate rise is expected soon. Supply chains have been under pressure from factors including the pandemic and a shortage of lorry drivers.

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said on Monday that the rise of crypto assets was helping illegal activity, Reuters reported. "I'm afraid that the advent of digital means of payment, and in particular crypto assets, I'm afraid that the evidence suggests, and we see this, is that it is providing another means of payment for people who want to conduct criminal activity," Bailey said during an online question-and-answer session organised by the BoE. Read more.

Covid support measures from the U.K. government were so speedily introduced that they created a fertile breeding ground for wrongdoing. Now, with schemes closed and reports last week indicating that a third of small businesses are “highly indebted”, we may begin to see much crime exposed as a result of insolvency, according to a commentary in The Times. Dealing with the fallout of this effectively and fairly is an immense and multifaceted task. In some cases, the solution is clear-cut; in others, the courts may be asked to stretch existing principles of law.

The Bank of England’s decision Thursday not to raise interest rates sent bond markets into a tizzy, leading to the biggest moves in U.K. bond yields in years, the Wall Street Journal reported. The bank has said that it expects to raise borrowing costs soon, moving ahead of the Federal Reserve and other major central banks in withdrawing stimulus to tame inflation. But the bank held fire Thursday, surprising investors who had become convinced an increase was coming.

Airline Avianca Holdings will move its domicile to the United Kingdom and its stock will no longer be traded on the Colombian stock exchange, the company said on Wednesday, a day after a U.S. court's approval of the company's restructuring plan, Reuters reported. Colombia's flag carrier had filed for chapter 11 protection at a U.S. court in New York in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. It now expects to exit the measure by the end 2021, after receiving around $2 billion in new financing under a debt-for-equity deal.

Inmarsat’s private equity owners are considering an exit from their investment in the U.K. satellite communications group, Bloomberg News reported. Apax Partners and Warburg Pincus have held early discussions about a possible sale of the business after receiving approaches from potential suitors, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. An exit from Inmarsat would mark a quick turnaround for its owners, which took the company private in 2019.

U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has given a personal guarantee that, short of a crisis, debt will shrink as a share of the economy from 2024 onwards, Bloomberg News reported. In his budget last week, the finance minister set a rolling three-year target to bring down the pandemic-bloated debt burden. But he has faced criticism that the rule would never bite because it moved forward every year.

The U.K labor market may be “alarmingly tight” and could stoke wage pressures, Office for Budget Responsibility member Charlie Bean told lawmakers, Bloomberg News reported. In testimony to the House of Commons Treasury Committee, Bean said the Bank of England would have little choice but to raise interest rates if the end of the furlough scheme does not bring more workers into the jobs market. Bean is a former deputy governor and chief economist of the U.K. central bank. The BOE will release its verdict on the labor market on Thursday, when it announces its interest-rate decision.

A troubling post-Brexit fishing spat between Britain and France showed few signs of abating Monday, a day before a threatened French blockade of British boats and trucks, the Associated Press reported. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss warned France that the U.K. will “not roll over” in the face of what she termed “unreasonable” threats from Paris. French fishing crews stood their ground, demanding a political solution to a local dispute that has become the latest battleground between Britain and the European Union.

England and Wales have seen a surge in company directors winding up businesses that are unable to pay their debts, taking so-called voluntary liquidations to their highest level since 2009 in the depths of the global financial crisis, Reuters reported. Total company insolvencies in England and Wales jumped in the three months to the end of September to their highest since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic at 3,765, up 43% on a year earlier, government data showed on Friday.