Manifest, an adviser to investors that collectively oversee more than £1tn in assets, has gone into administration, the Financial Times reported. Moore Stephens, the accountancy company, has been appointed as the administrator for the UK-based business, which analyses companies on behalf of investors and advises on corporate governance issues. Jeremy Willmont, partner at Moore Stephens and administrator of Manifest, said he was currently looking for a buyer for the proxy voting agency and was in talks with a “number of people”.

Default rates in the U.K. car-finance market are creeping up, adding to regulators’ concerns over the risks posed by consumer credit, Bloomberg News reported. The Financial Conduct Authority said on Thursday that the increase is driven by buyers with elevated credit risk, despite low interest rates and economic growth. These consumers account for about 3 percent of lending, the FCA said in a report. Overall, arrears and default rates remain low. British regulators are grappling with a surge in consumer credit, led by motor finance, which can pose risks to banks and the economy.

Company directors are dodging measures designed to stop abuse of the insolvency system so that they can avoid paying their creditors, new research suggests, The Independent reported. Experts have expressed concern about the number of “phoenix” companies, which are created by directors after a firm is put into what’s known as a pre-pack administration. In a pre-pack, a company’s assets are sold before an administrator is appointed.

A Manchester-based peer-to-peer lender has gone into administration after trading without a licence, putting £21m of investors’ money at risk, the Financial Times reported. Collateral (UK), a small P2P company offering pawnbroker-style and property-backed loans with 15 per cent returns, went into administration on Wednesday after it emerged that it was not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Electronics chain Maplin collapsed into insolvency on Wednesday, making it the second retailer to succumb to a brutal winter for Britain’s consumer economy in the space of just over an hour, the Financial Times reported. Graham Harris, who became chief executive only last month, said: “I can confirm this morning that it has not been possible to secure a solvent sale of the business and as a result we now have no alternative but to enter into an administration process.

Retailer Toys R Us UK has gone into administration, the firm appointed to oversee the process said, putting around 3,000 jobs at risk, Reuters reported. The toy retailer has struggled in Britain in recent years as shoppers increasingly prefer to spend online rather than visit its large out-of-town stores. Moorfields Advisory said that all stores were to continue trading until further notice, but that the company had entered administration after an “unsuccessful attempt to sell its business as a going concern.” Toys R Us operates more than 100 stores in Britain and also trades as Babies R Us.

Nearly all the senior employees in Royal Bank of Scotland's business turnaround division also worked for its predecessor, which is alleged to have pushed firms into bankruptcy, British lawmakers said on Tuesday. Figures released by RBS showed that the unit, whose predecessor is at the centre of a political storm over its treatment of troubled businesses, had merely been rebranded, Treasury Select Committee Chair Nicky Morgan said.

Theresa May has promised “tough new rules” next month that will aim to stop companies draining away their capital while neglecting their deficit-laden pension schemes. It’s a response to a series of scandals involving companies that have collapsed leaving pension holes behind them, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. The latest of these involves Carillion, which failed last month after a series of writedowns undermined the outsourcing group. At their 2016 valuation, the group’s pension schemes had a deficit of almost £1bn.

The UK’s oldest peer-to-peer service is warning investors that defaults on its recent loans will be running at a higher rate than during the financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. Peer-to-peer investing offers a trade off to investors: if they lend money directly to riskier borrowers, they can get a high rate of return on their cash. But Zopa, the dominant peer-to-peer lender in the UK consumer market with £3bn of lending, is anticipating falling investor returns despite increasing its volume of high-risk loans.

The Pensions Regulator is considering pursuing individuals connected with Carillion as it weighs using its powers to recover cash for the collapsed outsourcing group’s indebted pension schemes, the Financial Times reported. The regulator began an investigation into Carillion on January 18, three days after the group was placed into compulsory liquidation with an estimated £900m funding shortfall in its pension scheme.