House of Fraser is to close stores, potentially putting hundreds of jobs at risk, in a restructuring deal that will give control of the retail chain to the Chinese owner of Hamleys. C.banner is buying a 51% stake in the parent group of the ailing department store group, The Guardian reported. The buyout will involve the acquisition of shares from Nanjing Cenbest, part of China’s Sanpower conglomerate, which will retain a minority stake. C.banner has also agreed to pay a further £70m for new shares leading to a “significant capital injection” in House of Fraser.

Cambridge Analytica, the firm embroiled in a controversy over its handling of Facebook data, should not escape scrutiny through its decision to shut down, the chairman of a committee of British lawmakers said. Cambridge Analytica and its parent, SCL Elections, said on Wednesday they would begin bankruptcy proceedings after losing clients and facing mounting legal fees following reports the company wrongly harvested Facebook users' personal data from 2014, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Britain’s Interserve Plc reported a deeper annual pretax loss on Monday, sending its shares 20 percent lower, as CEO Debbie White leads a turnaround of the construction and support services company, Reuters reported. Shareholders on Friday approved a funding plan agreed with creditors in March after the company had warned it might breach covenants. On Monday, White, who took over as CEO in September, gave a blunt assessment of the company’s “inefficient operating model”.

Lebara announced on Monday that it will not meet a deadline to file audited annual results, putting the telecoms company at risk of defaulting on its bonds and adding to its recent string of financial reporting issues, the Financial Times reported. The terms of Lebara’s €350m bond dictate that it has to file audited annual accounts 120 days after the end of its financial year, which takes it through to the end of April. Lebara’s Dutch holding company Vieo announced on Monday that it would not meet this deadline, however, and would instead publish accounts “in the coming weeks”.

Economic growth figures on Friday came in weaker than expected, lowering the pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates in May, the Financial Times reported. The Office for National Statistics said the slowdown was not because of poor weather in February and March but was due to “pockets of weakness more broadly across the economy”. Construction suffered the most during the quarter, down by 3.3 per cent compared with the previous three months. However, the bulk of the decline in building activity was in January before the snows hit.

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has said that there is “a real risk” that no agreement will be reached with the UK in talks on its withdrawal from the political bloc, the Irish Times reported. Speaking on a visit to the Border area, Mr Barnier said that the EU was preparing for all options, including the possibility that Brussels and London cannot reach a deal on the UK’s departure in March 2019. Negotiations have become bogged down over how to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

Administrators for collapsed UK brokerage Beaufort Securities have defended their plans to use customer funds to cover the cost of the insolvency proceedings, in the face of an angry backlash, the Financial Times reported. Beaufort was shut by UK regulators in March, just hours before the US Department of Justice brought criminal charges against the company for its alleged involvement in securities fraud and money laundering.

Administrators for Beaufort Securities, the disgraced UK broker that was closed down by regulators in March, have said it could cost as much as £100m to return the cash and assets held by the company, currently valued at £550m, to its thousands of private investor clients, the Financial Times reported.

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme has declared mortgage broker Blevins Franks Mortgage Services in default. Blevins Franks was a trading name of Mortgage Partner Services Limited of Regents Park Road, London. The firm has also traded as Blackstone Franks Mortgage Services Limited. The FSCS says the firm went into default in March and that consumers can get their money back as a result of dealing with a failed firm. Read more. (Subscription required.)

The plot to reverse Brexit is missing a key ally: U.K. business. Companies have been among the most outspoken critics of the split from the European Union, and many have much to lose from the divorce. But as a group of lawmakers tries to engineer a second referendum, business leaders are recoiling. Worse than Brexit is prolonged uncertainty. “Business likes certainty and I can’t see how discussion of a second referendum helps create that certainty when the negotiations are not even concluded," Miles Celic, chief executive officer of TheCityUK, said in an interview with Bloomberg News.