Global regulators have claimed victory in the drive to tame the toxic parts of the “shadow banking” market that made a devastating contribution to the global financial crisis a decade ago, the Financial Times reported.

How rich is the irony that a lender should withdraw its support from Fairpoint, the debt management business. Last week, Fairpoint’s bank, AIB, said the UK junior market company needed to find alternative funding, the Financial Times reported. That stopped the group signing off its 2016 accounts and forced it to suspend its shares at 10p, valuing the company at £4.8m or a quarter of borrowings. Fairpoint is the Lancashire company set up in 1997 to help people drowning in debt to deal with their banks.

Consumer credit continued to grow at a double-digit pace in May, underlining why Bank of England officials took action to protect banks against the risk of a debt bubble, Bloomberg News reported. Unsecured lending rose 10.3 percent from a year earlier, the same as in April and close to its fastest rate since 2005, the U.K. central bank said on Thursday. It grew 1.7 billion pounds ($2.2 billion) on the month, the biggest increase since November last year.

The Bank of England published its twice-yearly assessment of UK financial stability on Tuesday. It judges that the UK financial system is more resilient than it was but is concerned that consumer credit is growing too fast and has ordered banks to put more money aside in case the market turns, the Financial Times reported. The bank’s Financial Policy Committee has warned that there are still “pockets of risk that warrant vigilance” in the UK financial system but reduced its overall warning level from “elevated” to “standard”.

Shares in Provident Financial Group dropped as much as 19 per cent at the start of trading on Wednesday, after the FTSE 100 group warned that reorganising its doorstop lending business would hit profits far more severely than expected., the Financial Times reported. Provident announced a major reorganisation of its “home credit” business alongside its full-year results in February, planning to axe around 2,000 of its self-employed agents and move thousands more into new positions on the company payroll.

International Bank of Azerbaijan, the energy exporting country's biggest lender, said on Wednesday a London court had supported its request to prevent creditors pursuing legal action in the United Kingdom, giving it time to restructure $3.3 billion (£2.5 billion) in debt, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. A similar decision was made by a U.S. court last month.

U.K. mortgage approvals fell to a seven-month low in a sign the housing market is slowing, though Britons are continuing to take advantage of low interest rates to take on unsecured debt, Bloomberg News reported. Lenders approved 64,645 home loans in April, the fewest since September and below the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey. Mortgage lending grew 2.7 billion pounds ($3.5 billion), the least since April 2016, the figures from the Bank of England show.

Marks and Spencer’s pre-tax profits fell by 64 per cent in the year to April 1, dragged down by restructuring costs, property impairments and lower clothing sales as the high street fixture turned away from a packed calendar of promotional events, the Financial Times reported. Profits before tax and exceptional items were down 11 per cent, slightly ahead of analyst expectations according to an average compiled by Bloomberg. Britain’s biggest apparel retailer said its market share had “stabilised” and that it now accounted for a higher proportion of full-price sales than a year ago.

Claimants against Lehman Brothers’ main European arm will receive at least £5bn in interest payments on top of previously awarded claims after the UK’s most senior court ruled they should receive the statutory interest that has built up over the last eight years, Reuters reported. PwC, the administrator of Lehman Brothers International (Europe), has already paid out 100% of creditors' original £11.5bn in claims but had sought direction from the courts on which creditors should receive extra money that has built up since those claims were met.

Dominic Chappell, a former bankrupt who bought BHS for £1 and received millions of pounds while presiding over the retailer’s collapse, has lost a bid to keep his company afloat after a judge questioned the value of its recent investment in Portuguese property, the Financial Times reported. Administrators for BHS Group have been granted a winding-up order for Retail Acquisitions, a company owned by Mr Chappell, after it failed to keep up with repayments on a £6m loan it received from BHS shortly after buying the doomed chain from Sir Philip Green in 2015.