Recently listed small business lender Funding Circle has cut expected returns for its UK retail investors after raising its estimate of defaults, the Financial Times reported. A higher risk of default on UK and US loans made in 2017 and 2018 has prompted the lender, which matches individual and institutional investors with small business borrowers, to revise down its predicted returns and tighten its lending criteria. Peer-to-peer lenders have attracted investors who are looking for better returns than high street banks can offer.

The British government is considering giving lawmakers a vote on a critical piece of Brexit legislation as early as next week, a change of tack as it tries to kick-start the country’s stuttering exit from the European Union. British lawmakers returned to the Brexit treadmill Tuesday after an Easter break, to face the familiar conundrum: finding a deal on the U.K.’s exit from the EU that can win a majority in Parliament. Prime Minister Theresa May wants the U.K.

The Scottish economist Adam Smith described Britain as a nation of shopkeepers in his book The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. Today, the UK is simply a country of shoppers, the Financial Times reported. Rarely has Britain been consuming so much and saving so little. As a nation — which statisticians break down into households, companies and the government — Britain spends far more than it earns. On this measure, the UK borrowed 5 per cent of national income in 2015, according to the OECD, the Paris-based international organisation.

UK asset manager M&G Investments has emerged as key to Bank of Ireland being able to remove €375 million of problem loans from its balance sheet. The investment group, a unit of London-based life insurance giant Prudential, has bought 95 per cent of the lowest rank notes – or equity portion – of a bond transaction Bank of Ireland used this month to refinance the non-performing, but mainly restructured, buy-to-let mortgages in the bond market, The Irish Times reported.

British state-controlled lender the Royal Bank of Scotland has doubled its funding pot to support small businesses to 6 billion pounds ($7.8 billion), but says the extra cash is no longer primarily for Brexit-proofing businesses, Reuters reported. NatWest, the biggest trading arm of RBS, said it had topped up its so-called Growth Fund in response to high demand from firms in industries including green energy and technology. The lender previously topped up the fund from 1 billion pounds to 3 billion pounds in October.

British shoppers ignored worries about an impending Brexit deadline and spent heavily in March, official data showed on Thursday, supporting the country’s sluggish economy while companies were cutting back on investment, Reuters reported. Retail sales volumes surged by the most in nearly two-and-a-half years in annual terms, leaping by 6.7 percent. That was way above all forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists.

Royal Bank of Scotland has been accused of “kicking people when they’re down” by enforcing aggressive debt collection policies against customers who own leasehold properties, the Financial Times reported. The taxpayer-owned bank forces mortgage customers who fall into arrears owing to disputes with their freeholder or property management company to repay the debt within 12 months or face repossession, despite a longstanding legal precedent that allows most borrowers to repay mortgage arrears over the remaining term of their loan.

Thomas Cook has told shareholders that it may have been regularly in breach of its own borrowing limits, marking the latest setback for the travel company which is restructuring in the face of shifting consumer habits, the Financial Times reported. The group said on Friday that the board had received external advice that its current interpretation of its financing limits may have led the company to “inadvertently” exceed the borrowing rules in its articles of association.

Mike Ashley should have been favourite to take over Debenhams. The pugnacious sportswear billionaire was already its biggest shareholder, while overlaps with other parts of his retail empire gave scope for cost savings, the Financial Times reported. But this week he could only fulminate from the sidelines as creditors of the UK department store group, which traces its history back 240 years, seized control.

Debenhams Plc, the 241-year-old U.K. department-store chain that anchors many of the country’s troubled shopping streets, was taken over by lenders after rebuffing a last-minute offer from billionaire Mike Ashley. The retailer entered a form of U.K. insolvency proceedings, handing creditors control and prompting the tycoon to call for the reversal of a process he described as a “national scandal.” Stores employing about 26,000 people will continue to operate as normal, but shareholders’ stakes are now worthless, Bloomberg News reported.