Essex and London Properties was wound up by the courts in September 2018 on public interest grounds. The Official Receiver was appointed liquidator of the company and has been made aware of several schemes targeting the company’s investors, GOV.UK reported. The ‘recovery schemes’ falsely claim they can retrieve invested capital from the liquidation process, pretend to be acting in co-operation with the Official Receiver and some even claim to be the Insolvency Service itself.

Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney said global growth prospects are flagging due to a trade war pursued by Washington, creating new challenges for economic policy makers, The Wall Street Journal reported. “The pickup that we’ve been expecting in global growth has not transpired,” Mr. Carney said in an interview Friday on the sidelines of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual symposium in the Grand Teton National Park. “When we trace it, it’s not because of Fed policy. It’s not because of global financial conditions.

Jamie Oliver is looking to move on from the collapse of his 25-strong restaurant group in the UK, by recasting his business interests to focus on his campaigning efforts against junk food and child obesity, the Financial Times reported. Mr Oliver, who has said that he was “utterly devastated” about the bankruptcy of his Jamie’s Italian chain in May, will unveil a report on Friday that is the first step in an effort to achieve B Corp status for his media and book publishing business, Jamie Oliver Group.

Gold miner Avocet Mining Plc on Wednesday appointed Paul Williams and Geoffrey Bouchier from Duff & Phelps Ltd as joint administrators, as it started its insolvency process, Reuters reported. The appointments, effective Aug. 21, come a few months after the struggling gold miner said its board proposed voluntary liquidation of the company as it faced mounting debt. Last week, the West Africa-focussed miner said it would pursue a formal insolvency process by appointing administrators to the company, but also remained open to exploring “viable funded investment opportunities”.

The U.K.’s oil refineries would be at a severe competitive disadvantage if Britain exits the European Union without a deal and tariffs were imposed on its gasoline exports, according to an industry group, Bloomberg News reported. A leaked government document, on the implications of a no-deal Brexit, claimed that two of the U.K.’s oil refineries could be forced to shut down if tariffs were imposed on British gasoline exports because it would make them noncompetitive compared to facilities within the bloc. However, they are unlikely to face permanent closure, according to industry analysts.

A judge in London said on Friday he would grant an Irish-owned company the right to seek to seize some $9 billion (€8.1 billion) in assets from the Nigerian government over an aborted gas project, The Irish Times reported. Process and Industrial Developments Ltd (P&ID) was awarded $6.6 billion in an arbitration decision over a failed project to build a gas-processing plant in the southern Nigerian city of Calabar. With interest payments, the sum now tops $9 billion – some 20 per cent of Nigeria’s foreign reserves.

South Africa’s Truworths International Ltd is considering closing loss-making stores of its UK-based shoe chain Office, joining the growing ranks of retailers to be hit by Britain’s gloomy trading environment, Reuters reported. Office is battling tough conditions in Britain due to uncertainty over Brexit, plus pressures on store-based retailers as shoppers move online. This resulted in the South African-listed clothing, shoes, jewellery and homeware retailer booking a non-cash impairment charge of 97 million pounds ($117.44 million) against Office’s assets.

The frontrunner in the bidding for British Steel is a Turkish investment group owned by the country’s military pension fund, which is chaired by a former two-star army general, the Financial Times reported. Ataer Holding, a wholly owned investment vehicle of the Turkish Armed Forces Assistance Fund, has been in negotiations with the UK government over financial support for a takeover of British Steel, which fell into compulsory liquidation in May.

One of Scotland’s leading providers of financial help, Scottishtrustdeed.co.uk, recently compiled a report on Scotland’s top insolvency hotspots from 2018, News Reel Hub reported. Glasgow and Edinburgh may have some of the highest numbers of insolvencies in terms of pure numbers, but it’s people living in rural communities, ‘fringe’ areas and Dundee who face the biggest risk of bankruptcy. The Accountant in Bankruptcy’s (AiB) latest report shows that a total of 4,644 people were declared bankrupt in the period 2017/18, representing an increase of 1.8% on the previous year.

It’s turning out to be a torrid summer for the usually sedate lead market. The London Metal Exchange (LME) lead market was roiled in early June by news of an unplanned outage at the Port Pirie lead smelter in Australia, Reuters reported. It’s just been upended again by a second shutdown of the plant, which is operated by Nyrstar, the Belgian company that had to be rescued from potential insolvency by trade house Trafigura. The second outage has seen LME time-spreads tighten again and the outright three-month price hit a two-week high of $2,101.50 per tonne on Monday.