The Co-operative Group will highlight the urgency of sweeping governance reforms this week as it reveals the extent of its financial woes with a record £2bn-£2.5bn pre-tax loss, the Financial Times reported. The loss, set to be announced on Thursday, will cap a torrid 12 months for the mutual, saddled with high debt and facing a weakened management team after two senior directors quit. It includes a £1.3bn shortfall at the Co-op Bank, which the group owned in its entirety until a recapitalisation in December reduced its stake to 30 per cent.

Punch Taverns, Britain’s second biggest pubs group, has brought in an independent corporate restructuring expert to aid long-running discussions over its £2.3bn debt mountain, The Telegraph reported. Dean Merritt, from Talbot Hughes McKillop, is representing the companies that issued Punch’s debt, amid hopes a deal that is agreeable to all lenders and shareholders can be thrashed out by the beginning of next month.

The Bank of England will have to rethink how it acts as lender of last resort after Britain failed to revise incoming EU rules that could scupper its scheme to give covert support to banks in difficulty, the Financial Times reported. Three EU countries rebuffed Britain’s last-minute pleas to “clarify” the fine print of an agreed rule book on bank crises so that central banks are allowed secretly to prop up lenders facing short-term funding difficulties.

Get ready for the biggest vote in the Co-op's 170-year history. Amid the squabbles, resignations and rows over pay, the poll on 17 May on boardroom reform will take place with the organisation's finances looking ghastly, The Guardian reported in a commentary. This is where attention will soon be concentrated once the Co-op Group publishes its accounts for 2013. It is also why the group's lenders, who have remained silent so far, could yet influence the struggle for power. Group debts were £1.2bn at the half-year stage.

An independent Scotland would face an immediate debt repayment of 23 billion pounds to the UK Treasury, British media reported, citing a leading economics research body's estimate. According to newspapers including The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Times, The National Institute for Economics and Social Research (NIESR) has warned that Scotland would have to borrow 23 billion pounds in its first year of independence, at interest rates of up to 1.65 percent higher than the UK Treasury's rates.

Ulster Bank chief executive Jim Brown told the Oireachtas finance committee yesterday that it was not in the business of writing off mortgage debt for customers in arrears with their home loans, the Irish Times reported. “Writing down an arbitrary amount of debt for a small number of people while they remain in their home is not something we will do,” he said. “We do not believe that it is an appropriate solution.

Punch Taverns Plc is seeking to suspend covenants on 2.3 billion pounds ($3.8 billion) of debt to give it more time for restructuring talks with bondholders, Bloomberg News reported. The owner of more than 4,000 pubs across the U.K. wants to waive the debt interest covenant and other provisions under its securitized borrowings until Aug. 29 at the latest, according to a company statement. The company has scheduled an April 29 vote for holders of its Punch A and Punch B securitizations.

The Co-operative Bank was thrown into fresh turmoil on Monday as it delayed the publication of its 2013 financial results, and the pay deal for its new boss, for a second time, The Guardian reported. The figures had already been postponed from 26 March after the bank stunned the City by admitting last month that it needed a further £400m on top of a £1.5bn cash injection at the end of last year.

The Bank of England urged banks on Thursday to consider the risk of future spikes in interest rates when they approve mortgages, and prepared tools to rein in potentially dangerous lending, Reuters reported. British house prices have risen by around 10 percent over the past year, and the central bank said mortgages were higher as a share of home-buyers' income than at any point since 2005, although other indicators remained weaker than average.

Later this week, a consultation closes on the Insolvency Service’s proposals to update elements of insolvency regulation and alter the fees-setting mechanisms used by the UK’s insolvency practitioners, economia reported in a commentary. While the proposals on the profession’s regulation and creditor engagement are broadly on the right lines, the same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the plans to prohibit insolvency practitioners from charging fees on an hourly basis in cases with no engaged creditors or creditor committees.