High Street fashion chain Bank has fallen into administration, putting 1,500 jobs at risk, BBC News reported. "A review of the business has determined that a solvent turnaround would not be possible," said Bill Dawson from Deloitte, which has been appointed as administrator. The chain, which has 84 stores and 1,555 employees, has been loss-making for a number of years, Mr Dawson said. It was sold by JD Sports to investment firm Hilco Capital in November.

About 1,000 companies will go bust and 12,000 Scots will be made bankrupt in the coming year, a report has predicted. Business advisers BDO said many companies had seen an economic improvement in the past year. But it warned there were signs that the economy was stalling. Cooling consumer demand, geopolitical and financial uncertainty and potential interest rate rises were cited as causes for concern.

The founder of City Link’s parent company has denied the firm’s collapse was mishandled and apologised to more than 2,000 workers who found out on Christmas Day that they would lose their jobs, The Guardian reported. Jon Moulton said the directors of Better Capital, which owns the parcel delivery firm, were very sorry about its collapse and the fallout for its workforce.

The results from the Bank of England’s latest health check on Britain’s top banks are in, with one bank failing, one coming razor close to failing and a third looking bad enough at the end of 2013 to warrant significant fund-raising, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported.

London house prices plunged in December and may barely increase next year after the “froth” came off the market, according to Rightmove Plc, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. Asking prices in the capital fell 5.1 percent from November, it said in the last of its monthly property reports for 2014. It forecast a 2015 gain of 1 percent to 3 percent after an 11 percent surge this year. The weakness in December wasn’t confined to London, with a record 3.3 percent monthly drop recorded nationally.

The results of the Bank of England’s stress tests on banks could make this a decidedly stressful week for executives at some of the more vulnerable institutions, The Scotsman reported. Regulators are keen that all the stress arrives at the same time, and it has been leaked that the central bank has stressed that leaks will not be tolerated. The officially designated stress point is Tuesday morning, and that will make for a frenzied few hours as analysts and investors rush to interpret the results.

Business groups warned Britain’s government on Wednesday that it risked undermining international efforts to rewrite tax rules after officials published plans to target multinational companies, including Google, that use complex strategies to cut their British tax bills, the International New York Times reported. Details of a new measure, which has become known as the “Google tax,” were released on Wednesday, a week after George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, promised a crackdown on tax-avoidance strategies.

The Bank of England is willing to put aside its own forward guidance to determine how well the country’s eight largest lenders would fare in a crisis, Bloomberg News reported. Governor Mark Carney has said rate increases from the current record-low 0.5 percent are likely to be gradual and the peak in rates lower than in previous cycles. Yet in its stress test of the U.K.’s eight largest banks, the BOE assumes an increase to 4 percent by the end of 2015.

Banks were in the firing line when the British Treasury went looking for revenue to someday balance its budget, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, sought to curb the favorable treatment that banks have received when he delivered the Autumn Statement, Britain’s annual spending plan, on Wednesday. Starting in April, banks will be able to apply only 50 percent of their profits against past losses to calculate their tax bill, rather than all of their profits.

British firms hired permanent employees at the slowest rate in 18 months in November, although starting salaries rose faster due to staff shortages in many sectors, a survey showed on Friday. The monthly survey from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation tallies with official data which has shown Britain's rapid pace of job creation slowing, after a sharp fall in the unemployment rate to just 6 percent in the three months to September. "(There's) not much sign of a happy Christmas in the job market," said Bernard Brown, a partner at accountancy firm KPMG, which sponsors the survey.