Royal Bank of Scotland has received approval from Treasury agency UK Financial Investments to pay about 550 million pounds ($920 million) in staff bonuses for 2013, Sky News reported late on Tuesday. The news service said the bank is expected to disclose the proposed bonuses when it announces its annual earnings, estimated at a loss of about 8 billion pounds.

UK regional carrier Flybe is tapping shareholders for £150m (€182m) to shore up its balance sheet as the embattled airline tries to reinvent itself, Independent.ie reported. The airline, which serves some routes between the UK and Ireland, will also use the funds with a view to "improving operational flexibility and providing additional cash reserves to enable the group to protect itself from unforeseen disruptions or occurrences". Chief executive Saad Hammad said that the fresh finance would enable Flybe to pursue its "profitable growth strategy".

National Australia Bank Ltd. (NAB) fell in Sydney trading after flagging a possible increase in provisions at its British operations, overshadowing a 7 percent increase in first-quarter profit, Bloomberg News reported. Shares of Australia’s biggest bank by assets slid as much as 2.8 percent, the biggest intraday decline in three months, and traded 1.9 percent lower at A$34.50 at 11:53 a.m. in Sydney. Provisions for some tailored business loans and compensation to U.K. customers for wrongly sold payment-protection insurance may rise, the Melbourne-based lender said in a statement today.

Stemcor Holdings Ltd. said its creditors voted to approve the U.K. steel trader’s plan to restructure its debt, Bloomberg News reported. Lenders voted “overwhelmingly” in favor of the plan, according to Charles Armitstead, a spokesman for Stemcor employed by Pendomer Communications LLP. The debt deal, which includes converting $1.1 billion of credit facilities into term loans and borrowing an additional $1.15 billion, will be taken to a U.K. court for approval this month, he said.

Insolvency practitioners are facing a crackdown after the Government proposed to cap the “excessive fees”  they charge creditors of failed companies, The Times reported. The Insolvency Service has started a consultation on whether to stop insolvency practitioners charging by the hour . They could instead be forced to fix their fees as a percentage of the property dealt with or the amounts realised from a liquidation. The regulator said that the changes could be the difference between creditors getting a fair deal or losing out through “excessive charges”.

British prosecutors filed criminal charges against three former bank traders for alleged fraud, opening a new front in a global investigation into alleged rigging of benchmark interest rates, with more charges in the pipeline, The Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office said Monday that it charged three former Barclays PLC traders with conspiracy to defraud for their alleged roles rigging the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.

British public bodies such as the environment agency, the armed forces, police and government departments would have to shed almost half their staff if the government went ahead with planned spending cuts that leave education and health care largely unscathed, a respected think tank said Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Creditors in Punch Taverns are weeks away from agreeing a major debt-for-equity restructuring designed to relieve the stricken pubs group from its £2.3bn debt overhang, The Telegraph reported. A major bondholder group - which speaks for investors including Standard Life, M&G and Aviva - said that a restructuring plan is “well advanced.” The comments came despite the 11th hour collapse of a rival restructuring plan put forward by Punch Taverns, the London-listed operating company which provides the beer to more than 4,000 leased pubs across the UK.

British and Dutch authorities have reignited the controversial dispute over the collapse of online lender Icesave at the height of the financial crisis in 2008 by filing a lawsuit for up to IKr1,000bn (£5.6bn) against Iceland’s bank guarantee fund, the Financial Times reported. Iceland’s guarantee scheme, TIF, said on Monday that the UK was seeking IKr452bn while the Netherlands wanted IKr104bn. Both countries are also seeking interest and costs in the five-year-old dispute.

An English subsidiary of troubled building group, Siac, is seeking court protection from its creditors, according to reports, the Irish Times reported. West Sussex-based Graham Wood Structural, owned by the Irish building group, has filed notice of its intention to appoint administrators. Such a move means that it will get protection from any legal action by creditors seeking to recover their debts from the company. Graham Wood specialises in complex structural steel projects. The business lost £1.5 million in 2011 and £1.2 million in 2012.