Retail Acquisitions, the company owned by former bankrupt Dominic Chappell and through which he made his ill-fated 2015 purchase of BHS, is to be put into liquidation, more than a year after the department store chain fell into administration, the Financial Times reported. Insolvency proceedings were launched against Retail Acquisitions last October as part of a wider attempt to track the assets of the failed high street group, but had stalled amid appeals from Mr Chappell.

No one expects negotiations over Britain’s exit from the European Union to go smoothly over the next two years, but a German newspaper’s account of a dinner last Wednesday between the British prime minister, Theresa May, and senior European Union officials suggests that round one, at least, was particularly discordant, the International New York Times reported. On Sunday, the German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, ran an article, clearly leaked by officials in the European Commission, that described a considerable gulf between Mrs.

The Bank of England faces a monetary policy dilemma as it prepares to mark 20 years of independence this week, the Financial Times reported. Should it respond to the unwelcome return of inflation with higher interest rates? Or should it worry about the latest evidence of a slowdown, by maintaining rates at the rock bottom 0.25 per cent rate? As the central bank prepares for its May interest-rate decision alongside the publication of quarterly forecasts, the signals from the Monetary Policy Committee are becoming increasingly hawkish.

British Prime Minister Theresa May pledged to protect workers against irresponsible practices over pensions on Sunday, promising new regulations on how schemes are handled during corporate takeovers. May's Conservative party will give regulators power to examine takeover proposals that threaten the solvency of a company pension scheme, and the regulator could be empowered to block takeovers if it is not satisfied with the arrangements, Reuters reported. May set out the policy ahead of an election June 8.

UK turkey producer Bernard Matthews was pushed into insolvency by private equity firm Rutland Partners to “line [its] own pockets”, according to the chairman of a parliamentary committee. Bernard Matthews was put into a “pre-pack” administration last year, allowing it to continue trading but offload its liabilities, including its pension scheme, before its assets were sold to Ranjit Boparan for £87.5m, the Financial Times reported. Rutland earned a £14m return on its investment in the faltering company.

Weakening productivity did not start with the financial crisis, but has been the consequence of long-term business under-investment in change. Expressed as the dispersion of productivity levels, zombie companies dominate Britain’s sclerotic economy, the Financial Times reported. These businesses have enough income, or ability to borrow, to survive but are too weak to invest in transforming themselves. Whether the data show dispersion is up or down a bit over the past 20 years is trivial to the continuous impact in clogging up the whole economy.

The Pension Protection Fund offers a sensible form of insurance. But by its nature, insurance creates opportunities for abuse. A payout owed when an adverse event occurs creates an incentive to bring about that very event. The PPF pays compensation to members of UK defined-benefit schemes when the company sponsoring their plan becomes insolvent, leaving insufficient assets to pay what is owed, the Financial Times reported. The risk is easy to see.

Lloyds Banking Group revealed a £100 million (€116.7 million) compensation scheme on Friday for victims of a fraud, for which six people were jailed this year, as Britain’s financial watchdog reopened an inquiry into the case, the Irish Times reported on a Reuters story. Britain’s biggest mortgage lender has been under pressure to compensate the victims at its HBOS business, who say it reacted too slowly to their complaints, and will hope that this will draw a line under the controversy.

The Bank of England’s corporate-bond purchases, one of the stimulus measures announced after the Brexit vote, could conclude as early as this month as the program nears its 10-billion pound ($12.5 billion) target, Bloomberg News reported. After starting purchases in September, BOE officials have found investors more willing to sell company debt than they expected and are on track to meet their target within weeks.

Nine years after the beginning of a 45-billion-pound ($56 billion) bailout by the British government, Royal Bank of Scotland is emerging from its restructuring process a shadow of what was once the biggest lender in the world, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. RBS had a balance sheet of 2.4 trillion pounds in 2008 - almost double Britain's annual economic output at the time - having staged a meteoric rise from being a small Scottish lender in the early 1990s.