In a related story, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.K. government is stepping up contingency planning to prepare for a possible Greek exit from the eurozone and the market instability such a move would create, U.K. Treasury chief George Osborne said on Sunday. A spokeswoman for the Treasury declined comment on the details of the contingency planning. The U.K. government has said the standoff between Greece’s new antiausterity government and the eurozone is increasing the risks to the global and U.K. economy.

The board of troubled British insurance company Towergate has agreed a deal with its bondholders, which will see the company taken over by its unsecured creditors, the company said on Friday. News of the deal had earlier been confirmed to IFR by a source close to the situation. Under the terms of the deal the unsecured bondholders led by Highbridge Capital Management, KKR and Sankaty will between them provide 300 million pounds ($457.26 million)of cash, 250 million pounds of which will used to pay senior secured bondholders, with 50 million pounds invested into Towergate itself.

The administrators for foreign exchange broker Alpari UK have been unable to sell the business after the company was crippled by losses caused by Switzerland's removal of its cap on the Swiss franc, Reuters reported. The joint administrators from KPMG said on Thursday they had sold the firm's intellectual property assets, including the Alpari trademark, to co-founder and main shareholder Andrey Dashin.

The co-founder of Russian-owned broker Alpari applied a year ago to wind up the parent company of its retail FX brokerage Alpari UK, fearing long before the company's collapse from trading losses last week that it "was doomed". Andrey Dashin, whose website lists him as "the Chairman of the Board of Directors and co-owner of the Alpari brand", said he lodged a winding-up petition for Alpari UK parent company Alpari Group Limited with a Cypriot court on Jan. 28, 2014.

Administrators for currency trading firm Alpari (UK) Ltd said they had received a number of inquiries from potential buyers of the business hit by heavy losses from last week's surge in the value of the Swiss franc, Reuters reported. Alpari lost millions of dollars after the Swiss National Bank removed its currency cap on Thursday and administrators appointed on Monday said that efforts to find a buyer for Alpari (UK) over the weekend failed and they would hold talks with interested suitors in the coming days. U.S.

The proposed end of insolvency litigation’s exemption from the Legal Aid, Sentencing, and Punishment of Offenders Act (LAPSO) has been challenged by an Early Day Motion tabled in Parliament, Credit Today reported. MP’s have thrown their support for a review of the decision to end the exemption before the Act comes into force in April, with 22 signatures of support recorded as of 14 January, primarily from the Labour party. Giles Frampton, president of insolvency trade body R3, has also supported the proposal.

Demand for U.K. mortgages fell the most since 2008 in the fourth quarter, according to the Bank of England, as more stringent lending criteria made it harder for homebuyers to get loans, Bloomberg News reported. Lenders had expected an increase in demand, the central bank said in a report today. The “significant” decline follows measures introduced in July by BOE Governor Mark Carney to limit riskier mortgages and prevent an unsustainable buildup of consumer debt.

British regulators have fined the former investment banking business of the troubled Portuguese lender Banco Espírito Santo for failing to disclose the departure of central staff members from one of its capital markets teams in 2013, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. The move is the first time that the Financial Conduct Authority of Britain has used its relatively new powers to fine so-called financial sponsors that act as advisers on initial public offerings and other stock listings.

Lloyds Banking Group is seeking an exemption to one of the key measures of the UK’s new ringfencing regime, as the country’s big banks take radically different approaches to rules aimed at protecting taxpayers from future financial crises, the Irish Times reported. The Bank of England has given the banks until today to submit initial proposals for how they will restructure to comply with rules forcing the separation of high-street branch operations from investment banking by 2019.

Irish people are still going to the UK in large numbers to work out their debt difficulties despite the introduction of a similar service in Ireland, new research shows, the Irish Times reported. According to AJ Debt Solutions, an Irish insolvency firm which specialises in UK insolvency processes, it processed close to 100 individual voluntary agreements (IVAs) in the UK for Irish citizens in the last 18 months. This compares with just 59 debt settlement arrangements (DSAs) in the Irish system agreed since September 2013, although 220 applications have been made.