Stores are closing daily on the U.K.’s shopping streets in a crisis reminiscent of the U.S. retail apocalypse, and there’s no sign of a bottom, Bloomberg News reported. The latest casualties include Kate Middleton’s fashion favorite L.K. Bennett, cake baker Patisserie Valerie and entertainment retailer HMV, which has collapsed into insolvency twice. Department-store chain Debenhams Plc is shutting dozens of outlets as it fights billionaire Mike Ashley’s bid for management control. Rival House of Fraser is shrinking after being rescued by the tycoon last year.

Philip Green is launching a restructuring of his Topshop empire, attempting to slash costs at the UK’s largest privately held fashion retailer and setting up a fierce battle with landlords, the Financial Times reported. The scandal-plagued billionaire wants to cut jobs, reduce the store portfolio and lower the rent and rates costs at his Arcadia group, whose brands include Topshop, Burton, Wallis and Miss Selfridge. Arcadia said it was “exploring several options” to cope with “an exceptionally challenging retail market and . . . continued pressures that are specific to

Outsourcing company Mitie Group is considering acquiring the largest unit of Interserve Plc, the troubled U.K. construction company that collapsed this week and had its assets taken over by lenders, Bloomberg News reported. Mitie’s chief executive officer, Phil Bentley, is working on plans to offer Interserve’s owners, which include a consortium of banks and hedge funds, about 100 million pounds for its support services unit, Sky News reported Saturday. This unit carries out facilities management work for government and various private sector clients in the U.K.

Billionaire Mike Ashley’s latest bid to control Debenhams Plc has sharpened battle lines with the troubled U.K. department-store chain’s lenders as it seeks to restructure its debt and avoid insolvency, Bloomberg News reported. Ashley, angling to add Debenhams’s roughly 240 U.K. and overseas stores to his empire that already includes Sports Direct International Plc and House of Fraser, has launched an effort he’s dubbed “Project Serpico” to expose what he says is an insider plot to steer the iconic company into the clutches of foreign hedge funds.

Mozambique is seeking the cancellation of government guarantees on debts run up by state-run security firm Proindicus which helped spark a debt crisis in the country, its prime minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday. Mozambique has a case in London's High Court against investment bank Credit Suisse and a number of other parties linked with the $2 billion (£1.5 billion) worth of loans, which have sparked investigations in the United States and Mozambique, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Standard Chartered Plc may wind up losing less on its biggest bad loan in India. Lenders to bankrupt Essar Steel India Ltd. will consider increasing a payout to Standard Chartered to expedite the sale of the troubled Indian mill to ArcelorMittal, according to people with knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg News reported. That could smooth over a sticking point in months of court battles as the world’s largest steelmaker tries to open shop in the South Asian nation. Standard Chartered has been seeking repayment on about 35.6 billion rupees ($513 million) of loans to Essar Steel.

Billionaire Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct International Plc accused Debenhams Plc’s board of misleading shareholders in its Jan. 10 results ahead of the department-store chain’s profit warning last week, Bloomberg News reported.

British baby products retailer Mothercare said on Tuesday it plans to sell its educational toy brand ELC to Teal Brands for £13.5 million (€15.75 million) as it looks to cut debt, sending its shares up 6 per cent, The Irish Times reported. The company’s sales and profit have been hammered by intense competition from supermarket groups and online retailers in its main British market as well as by rising costs. In addition to the sale of Early Learning Centre Ltd (ELC), it will also sell some related assets, Mothercare said. It will, however, retain some ELC inventory to sell later.

Beleaguered rich-lister Eric Watson will likely remain embroiled in courts for years — and faces the possibility of a tax bill of $200m when penalties are added — after a landmark court decision yesterday saw his businesses ruled to have engaged in $51.5m in tax avoidance, The New Zealand Herald reported. Justice Matthew Palmer said a complex 2002 transaction — involving Cayman Island companies while Watson himself was relocating from New Zealand to the UK for tax purposes — was an avoidance arrangement. The case is one of the largest tax judgments in New Zealand history.

The UK Pensions Regulator has dropped its probe into whether Johnston Press used an insolvency process to dump £300m of pension liabilities into the industry-backed Pension Protection Fund, the Financial Times reported. The regulator opened an investigation in November after Johnston, the publisher of the Scotsman and Yorkshire Post, used a “pre-pack” insolvency to keep the business afloat. Pre-packs are legitimate procedures that allow a business to go into administration, with the assets then sold on to a new buyer, minus liabilities such as pension debt.