British fashion retailer Austin Reed Ltd will start winding down as no viable offer was received for the company over a five-week sale process, its joint administrators said, Reuters reported. The retailer will shut its 120 stores by the end of June, which will affect about 1,000 jobs, Austin Reed's administrators at AlixPartners Services UK LLP said in a statement on Tuesday. Five of the company's outlets inside Boundary Mills stores will be sold to AR Operations Ltd. The deal includes the transfer of 28 employees to AR Operations.

Signs of faltering demand in the housing market are prompting estate agents and analysts to suggest England’s house price boom may be ending, the Financial Times reported.

Debenhams, the British retail chain with 11 outlets in Ireland employing 2,200 staff, has become embroiled in a row with the Roche family that once owned Roches Stores, the Irish Times reported. Debenhams bought Roches Stores from the Roche family for €29 million in 2006 and rebranded it, although the family held on to the properties. Details of the row have emerged in documents given to the High Court as part of Debenhams’ Irish division’s application for examinership, a form of court protection while it restructures its finances.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s campaign to keep Britain in the European Union was bolstered on Wednesday by a report from one of the country’s most authoritative economic research bodies, which concluded that a withdrawal from the bloc would lead to up to two more years of public spending cuts or tax increases, the International New York Times reported. A frequent critic of government economic plans, the research body, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, this time delivered some welcome news for Mr. Cameron.

A former managing director of Mothercare and Burton is leading a bid for BHS backed by a wealthy Portuguese family, which has emerged as the frontrunner to rescue the department store chain. Greg Tufnell, the brother of former England cricketer Phil Tufnell, has been holding talks with administrators, The Guardian reported. It is understood that Tufnell aims to become BHS chairman. He is working alongside Nick de Scossa, a Swiss banker, and José Maria Soares Bento, thought to working with a wealthy family in Portugal.

The cost of payment protection insurance (PPI) payouts continues to hang over Clydesdale Bank after it announced a £450m charge for the mis-selling scandal in its first results as a stock market-listed company, The Guardian reported. Officially known as CYBG since being spun out of National Australia Bank (NAB) earlier this year, the bank is trying to cut costs to bolster its profitability as an independent entity.

Retail tycoon Philip Green's Arcadia group was warned by a senior Goldman Sachs banker that a possible suitor of its BHS department store chain had a history of bankruptcy, British lawmakers were told on Monday, Reuters reported. The 88-year-old, 164-store, BHS was placed into administration, a form of creditor protection, by owner Retail Acquisitions last month, putting 11,000 jobs at risk. Green owned BHS for 15 years before selling it in March last year for a nominal sum of one pound to Retail Acquisitions, a group of little known investors led by Dominic Chappell.

Excalibur Steel, a management buyout group interested in purchasing Tata Steel’s British steelmaking operations, is ready to lend its support to rival bidder Liberty House, according to industry sources, the Irish Times reported on a Reuters story. Tata said in March it wanted to sell its UK steel operation, which has been hit by cheap Chinese imports, rising costs and weak demand. The decision prompted a political scramble to find a buyer to save the thousands of jobs at stake. The deadline for final bid submissions is on Monday.

Yousuf Bhailok, the Preston-based property millionaire, is pulling out of the race to save BHS after administrators told buyers to sweeten their offers by tens of millions of pounds, the Telegraph reported. The administrators are also demanding that all of the retailers shops are included in any bid. Mr Bhailok confirmed to The Telegraph that he had withdrawn his interest. He pulled out of the process after being told that he would have to make an offer to buy all of BHS’s 164 shops, including 40 loss-making stores that are on the administrators' “red list”.

The Bank of England said Thursday that a vote to leave the European Union could slam the brakes on growth in the U.K., push up unemployment and stoke inflation, in its clearest warning yet about the potential economic costs surrounding a referendum on membership next month, The Wall Street Journal reported.