Toshiba Corp. said Thursday it would liquidate its U.K. nuclear business and sell its U.S. natural-gas business, taking a combined loss of nearly $1 billion. The moves are intended to clear away legacy problems after Toshiba went through waves of restructuring in the past three years that included the bankruptcy of its former Westinghouse Electric business in the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K. business—NuGeneration Ltd., known as NuGen—had sought to build what was planned as Europe’s largest new nuclear project in northwest England.

Toshiba is set to liquidate UK nuclear arm NuGen, according to people familiar with the company, dealing a hammer blow to plans to build a new plant at Moorside in Cumbria. The Japanese conglomerate, whose board is meeting on Thursday, is almost certain to take the decision to wind up NuGen after all avenues to sell the unit were exhausted, the Financial Times reported. “It is 80 per cent likely that Toshiba will decide at the board meeting to wind it up,” a source close to NuGen told the Financial Times.

The London restaurant scene has suffered its worst year for closures in decades as a rapid expansion turned to bust, the Financial Times reported. About 117 independent restaurants closed in London in the 12 months to September 2018, 40 per cent more than last year and surpassing 2003’s peak of 113, according to Harden’s London Restaurants guide. “There are just too many restaurants out there,” said Peter Harden, who has compiled the guide, now in its 28th year.

UK restaurant chain Prezzo said trading remains challenging even after it closed more than 100 restaurants, restructured its debts and its main backer wrote off two-thirds of its investment, the Financial Times reported. The Italian-themed chain, which now has 186 rather than 300 restaurants, is majority owned by TPG, a private equity group that bought it off the stock market for £304m in 2014. However, a debt-for-equity swap has diluted TPG’s stake and turned five debt providers into shareholders.

The government will not rescue universities that are struggling financially, the higher education regulator warned on Tuesday. Michael Barber, chair of the Office for Students, told delegates at the Wonkfest higher education conference that the regulator would assess financial sustainability and good governance, but its role was to “protect student interests”, not “bail out providers in financial difficulty,” the Financial Times reported.

Investors in a Schroders Plc real estate fund that owns some of London’s priciest offices are seeking to withdraw almost one-fifth of the 836 million pounds ($1.09 billion) pool as Brexit-related worries have mounted, people with knowledge of the matter said. Some 150 million pounds in redemption requests at the West End of London Property Unit Trust have prompted restructuring talks that could result in a sale of the fund or a change of manager, among other options, said the people, asking not to be identified as the negotiations are private, Bloomberg News reported.

Brexit uncertainty contributed to a sharp slowdown in Britain’s dominant services sector in October, according to a survey of executives. The IHS Markit services purchasing managers’ index revealed the slowest pace of growth since the snowstorms at the start of the year, the Financial Times reported. The headline reading fell to 52.2 in October, down from 53.9 in September and far below City economists’ expectations of 53.8. Monday’s survey is the most important economic data yet published to suggest that fraught Brexit negotiations are harming Britain’s real economy.

Crawshaw Group plc said two Ernst & Young LLP executive were appointed as joint administrators, after the UK meat retailer said last week it did not have sufficient cash to restructure, Reuters reported. The company joins a growing list of British retailers that have been forced to seek protection from creditors after being hit hard by competition from online shopping platforms and a rise in costs from the pound’s Brexit-induced weakness.

An “unprecedented” number of price rises from energy suppliers this year has caused UK household energy debt to surge by 24 per cent over the past year, research has found. At this time of year, most households have usually built up credit with their energy supplier, the Financial Times reported. Yet, despite the summer heatwave and warmer than usual autumn temperatures, price increases mean 3m households owe a total of £400m to their energy supplier, according to research by uSwitch, the energy switching service.

The EU is a bully. The EU is inflexible and unjust. Our proud nation must no longer submit to the diktats of Brussels and its accomplices. These complaints of Brexiters in the UK resemble the indignation of some Greeks about their nation’s treatment during the eurozone’s sovereign debt and financial sector crises, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. The British government and people, still unable to settle on a definition of Brexit, can learn from Greece’s long, painful struggle. Some lessons offer grounds for hope.