The UK is one of the only major markets where house prices are unlikely to grow in 2018, according to new forecasts from Fitch Ratings, the Financial Times reported. The ratings agency’s annual housing and mortgage outlook predicted average prices in the UK will be flat this year, with declines in London and the South East due to “Brexit uncertainty, stretched affordabliity and low income growth”. The only housing markets assessed by Fitch with a worse outlook for 2018 were Greece, where it predicted a 2 per cent decline, and Norway, where prices could drop 5 per cent.

Private equity groups and distressed buyout firms are circling collapsed British construction company Carillion to cherry-pick assets from one of the UK’s most politically sensitive corporate failures, the Financial Times reported. The interest from private investors — including the Canadian fund manager Brookfield and British private equity group Endless, which specialises in turnrounds — comes as the government struggles to protect thousands of jobs left at risk by Carillion’s liquidation.

Five UK banks are facing heavy losses on loans to Carillion, after irreconcilable differences between the company, its lenders and the government pushed the UK construction and services group into liquidation on Monday, sources said. Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), HSBC, Santander, Lloyds and Barclays are among the most heavily exposed after providing £140m of emergency loans in September 2017 and are also lenders on a £790m revolving credit facility, Reuters reported.

Royal Bank of Scotland staff helping small firms to restructure debt during the financial crisis were given a list of ways to squeeze more money from struggling clients and told to "Just Hit Budget!", a memo released on Wednesday showed. The release of the 2008 document by the British Parliament's Treasury Select Committee (TSC) comes ahead of a debate by lawmakers on Thursday on the treatment of small business customers by the bank's Global Restructuring Group (GRG), the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Collapsed British firm Carillion, which has come under political fire for paying dividends while racking up big debts and a pension deficit, has handed more than $1 billion to shareholders since it was created 19 years ago, a Reuters analysis shows. The construction company raised its payout to shareholders every year, taking its dividends from 4 pence-a-share in 1999 to 18.45 pence-a-share in 2016, according to the analysis of its accounts, Reuters reported.

Leading British lenders including Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group face the prospect of hundreds of millions of pounds in outstanding loans going unpaid from Carillion’s collapse on Monday, Reuters reported. Along with 10 other banks, they arranged a 790 million pound ($1.1 billion) revolving credit facility for Carillion in 2015, which made up the bulk of 835 million pounds worth of syndicated bank loans owed by Carillion that mature in 2020. Last September, five banks agreed to an additional 140 million pounds in loans repayable at the end of 2018.

UK decision-makers think Brexit will have a more negative impact on their business over the next two years, Economia reported. Sentiment fell from 105 to 98 in the last quarter of 2017, meaning businesses are becoming more pessimistic, according to a survey conducted by YouGov. It used data provided by mid-tier firm RSM’s Brexit Monitor, based on 310 interviews with middle market firms that had turnovers between £30m and £300m.

Shares in debt-laden British building and services company Carillion Plc sank 15 percent on Thursday in the absence of news on a deal needed to shore up its finances, Reuters reported. Many observers have warned that the 200-year old company, responsible for some of Britain’s highest profile infrastructure projects, risks collapse if it does not reach a deal with lenders to restructure its finances. The company, which employs 43,000 people, said on Saturday that it would meet creditors on Wednesday and that it could recapitalise or restructure its balance sheet in other ways.

Brexit is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Frankfurt to try to lure global banks away from London — but do not expect Germany’s main financial regulator to be part of a heavy sales pitch. “We are not a marketing agency and not interested in doing industrial policy,” says Felix Hufeld, the president of BaFin, which oversees 1,740 banks in the eurozone’s largest economy.

The UK will remain a relative laggard among developed countries this year as the after-effects of the Brexit referendum mean the economy will only enjoy limited benefits from a global upswing in growth, economists said in the FT’s annual survey of the profession. Forecasts for growth during 2018 clustered around 1.5 per cent as the UK will be pulled in two separate directions next year as uncertainty over the outcome of the Brexit negotiations reduces growth at the same time as an upswing in global activity boosts exports, the Financial Times reported.