Outsourcing firm Mitie Group Plc said on Monday it would sell its pest control business to Rentokil Initial Plc for 40 million pounds cash, as it looks to focus on its core businesses as part of a restructuring, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The company, which provides cleaning, security and healthcare services, has been restructuring after a string of profit warnings, which it has blamed on rising costs and Brexit uncertainty.

Shares of Avocet Mining dropped more than 17 percent on Monday after warning that it could be broken up as the struggling gold miner continues talks with its largest shareholder, Elliott Management, to restructure its debt, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The company, which debuted on the London Stock Exchange in 2007 at 1,200 pence a share, has lost nearly all of its value and was trading at 9.9 pence. The stock was the largest percentage loser on the exchange.

Mitie’s shares fell as much as 8 percent on Wednesday after the British outsourcing group said it expects flat to lower operating profit and higher debt in the first half of the year, largely due to increased technology costs, Reuters reported. Mitie, which provides engineering, security and cleaning services to clients including Sainsbury’s, Vodafone and Rolls-Royce, is focused on technology investment and employee retention in a turnaround plan.

Britain's largest private healthcare group, BMI Healthcare, is nearing a 2 billion pounds restructuring deal that could cut millions of pounds from its annual rent bill, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. An announcement under which BMI's rent bill will be cut by about 60 million pounds is likely to be made imminently, the source told Reuters.

The British government will step in to bail out a 335 million pound new hospital in the city of Liverpool, after the collapse of Carillion, which was overseeing the deal, Sky News reported on Monday. An announcement by ministers on the termination of the Royal Liverpool Hospital private finance initiative deal and taking it into full public ownership is expected to be made within days, Sky said.

Debenhams Plc is known for being constantly on sale. But if its fortunes don’t improve in the next few months, it may well have to attempt a controversial property restructuring, a Bloomberg View reported. This might set billionaire shareholder Mike Ashley up for another high street bargain. The Sunday Telegraph reported Sept. 8 that Debenhams, which warned on profit three times this year, was considering a CVA, a mechanism retailers have been using lately to obtain creditor agreement to close some stores and cut rent on others.

Streets littered with potholes and garbage. Alcohol and drug treatment centers shut down. Vulnerable adults and children left without care. That is the grim picture of Britain’s future painted by the County Councils Network, which warned on Thursday that local councils will be forced to slash more than $1 billion from their budgets next year in cuts that will very likely result in services being whittled to the bone.

Geopolitical tensions will take centre stage in London’s law courts after a legal ruling opened the door to a case that could have major implications for the sovereign debt markets, the Financial Times reported. The English Court of Appeal last week ruled that a $3bn dispute between Ukraine and Russia over the non-payment of bonds should go to a full trial.

The UK Pension Regulator is facing criticism over a 2013 deal that allowed Kodak UK to jettison it pension liabilities but now looks set to create a £600m hit to the country’s pensions bailout fund, the Financial Times reported. Kodak had sought approval from the regulator to be released from its duty to support its 15,000 member retirement plan, following the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Eastman Kodak, its US parent company, in 2012.

Unemployment in the UK now stands at its lowest level in four decades. Gross domestic product growth at the start of the third quarter of 2018 also shows an economy in decent shape, having grown faster than in the prior two quarters. But we should not be complacent about those numbers. The UK faces the highest risk of recession of any of the 13 economies for which The Conference Board tracks business cycles and our leading economic index suggests the British economy may start shrinking over the course of the next year, the Financial Times reported in a commentary.