Britain has blocked plans by state-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland to pay bonuses worth double an employee's fixed salary, adding to the pressure on banks to rein in pay. Banks across Europe have come under fire from the public, shareholders and politicians for extravagantly rewarding staff at a time of austerity that was brought on in part by the reckless lending of some financial groups. British Business Secretary Vince Cable this week wrote to banks and other big companies warning them to cut out excessive rewards or face tighter rules.

Britain has blocked plans by state-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland to pay bonuses worth double an employee's fixed salary, adding to the pressure on banks to rein in pay. Banks across Europe have come under fire from the public, shareholders and politicians for extravagantly rewarding staff at a time of austerity that was brought on in part by the reckless lending of some financial groups. British Business Secretary Vince Cable this week wrote to banks and other big companies warning them to cut out excessive rewards or face tighter rules.

Lenders to the Gherkin, the conical skyscraper that’s one of London’s best-known landmarks, appointed a receiver to take control of the building after years of defaults, Bloomberg News reported. Holders of debt backed by the 30 St. Mary Axe tower in the City of London financial district hired Deloitte LLP after “adverse interest rate and currency movements have caused the total senior liabilities secured by the property to increase materially,” the company said in a statement today. Receivership is similar to U.S. bankruptcy protection.

An independent Scotland would need the support of the UK Treasury and the Bank of England to prevent savers in its banks being as vulnerable as those who had money in Iceland during the 2008 financial crisis, according to one of the three leading credit rating agencies, The Guardian reported.

The number of companies going bust has increased by more than 70% over the year, according to official figures, BBC News reported. The Accountant in Bankruptcy (AiB) figures showed 244 Scottish companies failed during the first quarter of this year, compared with 143 during the same period in 2014. The numbers increased by 6.6% on the fourth quarter of 2013. The number of personal insolvencies fell by 14%, compared with the same time a year ago.

Vince Cable has issued a stark warning to Britain's leading boardrooms that they need to crack down on bonuses to restore public trust and avert the threat of fresh legislation to limit executive pay, The Guardian reported. The business secretary fired off a warning to the 100 biggest UK-listed companies about the damage big pay deals can have on their image, before Barclays' annual meeting on Thursday, where protests about the bank's £2.4bn bonus pot are expected to be registered by disgruntled shareholders.

Creditors – including HM Revenue & Customs – could lose more than £150m a year if the government applies the Jackson reforms to insolvency cases, a new report claims. Research commissioned by R3, a trade body for insolvency professionals, found litigation currently brings in £300m a year from insolvent businesses. Of this, up to £70m relates to money owed to HMRC, with the rest owed to businesses, The Law Society Gazette reported.

Royal Bank of Scotland has been cleared of deliberately engineering the collapse of some of its business customers, but has decided to sell off the £3.2bn commercial property portfolio at the centre of the row, The Guardian reported. The state-backed lender was accused last November in a report by a former government adviser, Lawrence Tomlinson, of putting some distressed commercial clients out of business in order to scoop up assets for its own West Register property business.

Britain's Co-operative Group will report a loss of more than 2 billion pounds on Thursday, laying bare the full damage done by disastrous acquisitions, a drugs scandal and an exodus of executives that have put its future as a mutual into doubt, Reuters reported. Losses at the group, whose activities range from supermarkets to funeral services, are expected to be up to 2.5 billion pounds for 2013, according to a source close to the matter.

British pawnbroker Albemarle & Bond will be bought out of administration by investment fund Promethean Investments in a deal which will save the majority of its stores and 628 jobs, administrators said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The acquisition comes a day after Britain's biggest pawnbroker H&T said it was ending talks regarding the possible acquisition of some of A&B's assets. Administrator PwC said in a statement that the deal with Promethean involved it taking on 128 A&B stores out of 187, and 628 staff out of a workforce of 809.