Gold miner Avocet Mining Plc said on Monday it will consider filing for insolvency of its subsidiary Societe des Mines de Belahouro (SMB), which operates the Inata gold mine in Burkina Faso, after the unit’s standstill agreement with its creditors expired, Reuters reported. The boards of SMB and Avocet will meet on Sept. 8 to consider “all available options, including the potential filing of an insolvency petition by SMB”, Avocet said in a statement. SMB’s financial and trade creditors could not agree among themselves on an extension of the agreement, the company said.

As any builder or keen DIYer will tell you, there is a right time — and a wrong time — to attempt certain jobs. Fixing the roof is best attempted when the sun is shining, as one frequent sporter of the high vis was wont to remind us. Concrete is best mixed and poured in cooler conditions, as this columnist’s predecessor can attest (who knew?). And it seems HSS Hire — equipment supplier of choice to the latter, if not the former — is being reminded of this truism as it attempts to fix its own business model, the Financial Times reported.

We are barely a fortnight away from the 10th anniversary of Northern Rock’s dramatic collapse. At the beginning of 2007, the Newcastle-based lender was a darling — loved by investors for its aggressive expansion and by customers for its generous mortgages for 125 per cent of property value. But by mid-September, with funding running out and panicked queues outside branches, it was clear that Britain’s fastest-growing bank had fallen victim to a hubristic faith in the stability of the financial markets, the Financial Times reported.

Louisa Bell, a 75-year-old grandmother from one of Newcastle’s poorer areas, is a typical customer of Provident Financial: several thousand pounds in debt, she is confused by recent turmoil at the company and struggling to make ends meet. But since a profit warning from the UK’s biggest subprime lender sent its share price plummeting this week, the tables have turned and it is now the FTSE 100 group itself that faces worries about running out of money, the Financial Times reported. The crisis has been largely self-inflicted.

BHS creditors will receive £30m after Sir Philip Green’s retail empire Arcadia relinquished a claim on the assets of the department store chain whose collapse culminated in thousands of job losses and the billionaire paying £363m to cover the pensions of former workers, the Financial Times reported. The deal with BHS liquidators FRP Advisory ends the prospect of a legal battle surrounding a secured loan that the collapsed chain owed to Sir Phillip’s Arcadia Group, people briefed on the situation said.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc settled a lawsuit filed by the owner of a bankrupt student- housing company that claimed the bank had sold him hedging products linked to Libor while at the same time trying to rig the interest-rate benchmark, Bloomberg News reported. Stuart Wall, owner of Opal Property Group Ltd., alleged that RBS mis-sold the group an interest-rate swap, which contributed to the collapse of the business in 2013. While terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed, the four-year-old claim had been valued at as much as 669 million pounds ($856 million).

The crisis at Provident Financial has left thousands of the subprime lender’s 730,000 consumer credit customers in a precarious financial position because many of them rely on regular visits from the company’s staff for credit to tide them over. Shares in the FTSE 100 lender fell 66 per cent on Tuesday after the company issued its second profits warning in two months and said its chief executive would be resigning after a mismanaged restructuring of its doorstep lending division, the Financial Times reported.

Britain's Pensions Regulator is to prosecute Dominic Chappell for failing to provide information and documents requested during an investigation into the sale of department store chain BHS to him by retail tycoon Philip Green, it said on Tuesday. Green sold the loss-making 180-store chain to Chappell's Retail Acquisitions Ltd vehicle for 1 pound ($1.28) in 2015. Chappell was a serial bankrupt with no retail experience, Reuters reported.

When lenders have trouble collecting debts, it is normally blamed on truant borrowers. But Provident Financial’s woes — revealed on Tuesday with the second profits warning in as many months — seem to be largely self-inflicted, the Financial Times reported. The consumer credit group in February decided to restructure its doorstep lending business, but problems with recruitment caused a slump in collections. As a result, the company has had to cut its profits guidance for the business by £100m in the space of a few weeks.

The Co-operative Bank cleared has cleared one of the last remaining hurdles in its latest attempt to get back on its feet, The Independent reported. In reality, the result of the EGM to approve its £700m recapitalisation (it achieved 96 per cent support) was never really in doubt. Such votes aren’t held in the City if there’s a chance that they will be lost. The question now is whether the bank will now be able to move on from here and successfully re-establish itself as a small, but still viable, niche player able to hold its own in a competitive market.