Barclays Plc is leading a round of talks with investors to raise the equivalent of 500 million pounds ($691 million) of debt for U.K. supermarket chain Asda after a deal to purchase its forecourt gas pumps business fell through, Bloomberg News reported. The bank is seeking to raise senior secured debt for Asda which could be a mix of bonds and loans. The proceeds, along with 262 million pounds on Asda’s balance sheet, will go to repay a 750 million-pound bridge loan.

The global upswing in trade is leaving the U.K. behind, an early sign of the challenge Brexit is presenting its economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K. formally began its new relationship with the European Union Jan. 1. Before then, and before the Covid-19 pandemic upended world trade, Jason Wouhra’s food wholesale business in England’s West Midlands, Lioncroft Wholesale Ltd., generated up to a quarter of its annual revenue from customers in Spain, Portugal and other markets in the EU. Lioncroft has now stopped exporting to the EU altogether.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak plans to extend a program of state-backed loans for U.K. businesses, one of the measures to aid the economy’s recovery from the worst recession in a century, Bloomberg News reported. The Recovery Loan Scheme was due to end Dec. 31 but will now be extended for a further six months, according to a person familiar with the Treasury’s plans who asked not to be named because discussions are still underway. Sunak is set to announce the decision in his budget on Oct. 27, the person said.

Investors are coming to terms with the prospect that the Bank of England could scale back support for the gilt market sooner than expected, Bloomberg News reported. Traders are now betting the BOE will raise the key interest rate to 0.5% in February. That’s the threshold after which the bank may let gilts that mature in its 875-billion pound ($1.2 trillion) asset purchase program roll out of the portfolio without being replaced.

Britain will issue up to 800 temporary visas to foreign butchers in an effort to alleviate a labor shortage in the pork industry that has already led to the culling of some 6,000 healthy pigs, the Washington Post reported. The stopgap measure was crafted in response to “a unique range of pressures on the pig sector over recent months,” said George Eustice, a British minister in charge of food, in a statement. Among the causes he mentioned were the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic and import restrictions China has placed on British suppliers.

Two of the Bank of England’s policy makers signaled they’re in no rush to raise interest rates, the first signs of a push back against market expectations for a move by the end of the year, Bloomberg News reported. Catherine Mann said she “can wait” before raising rates because markets have already tightened financial conditions. That was hours after Silvana Tenreyro, considered to be one the BOE’s most dovish policy makers, warned against a “self-defeating” hike to contain temporary inflation pressures.

Britain said that Brexit minister David Frost would meet with European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic in Brussels on Friday to see if a "substantial gap" between the two sides over the transit of goods to Northern Ireland can be bridged, Reuters reported. A British government spokesperson welcomed the "considerable effort" made by the EU to address issues with the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol but said "a substantial gap" remained between the two sides. "Both we and the EU now have proposals on the table.

U.K. disposable incomes are set for their biggest drop in a decade next year as rising inflation, tax hikes and tighter monetary and fiscal policy put the squeeze on consumers, according to Credit Suisse, Bloomberg News reported. The bank predicts a 1.5% drop in real disposable incomes in 2022, the biggest fall since the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2011. That will in turn damage the prospects for economic growth, analysts including Sonali Punhani wrote in a note. The forecast is the latest sign of concerns around a looming crunch in the U.K.

A collapse in cryptocurrencies is a "plausible scenario" and rules are needed to regulate the fast-growing sector as a "matter of urgency", Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Risks to financial stability from the application of crypto technologies are currently limited, but there are a number of "very good reasons" to think that this might not be the case for very much longer, Cunliffe said. "Regulators internationally and in many jurisdictions have begun the work.

British companies pushed the number of workers on payrolls above pre-coronavirus levels last month, an indication of strength in the labor market that may embolden the Bank of England to raise interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. Payrolls climbed by a record 207,000 last month, according to data from the U.K. tax authority. Separate figures from the Office for National Statistics showed job vacancies rose to 1.2 million, also an all-time high.