Eight out of 10 British companies think pulling out of the European Union would be bad for business, according to a poll published on Thursday, Reuters reported. Talk of Britain breaking its 40-year ties with the EU gathered pace in January when Prime Minister David Cameron said he would negotiate a new role in Europe and hold a referendum by 2017 asking voters whether they wanted to stay in or leave. Of 415 firms surveyed by the research company YouGov, 78 percent thought staying in the EU would be in their best interest.

Britain’s unemployment rate was probably unchanged in July as the building economic recovery takes time to filter through to payrolls, Bloomberg reported. The rate based on an International Labour Organization method was 7.8 percent in the three months through July, according to the median of 28 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Jobless claims probably dropped in August, according to a separate poll.

The Bank of England made no new attempt to talk down borrowing costs in financial markets on Thursday, prompting investors to pile on bets that it will raise interest rates sooner than it has suggested as growth picks up, Reuters reported. The Bank left monetary policy unchanged at its third monthly meeting under new governor Mark Carney and opted not to repeat its warning of July that investors were getting ahead of themselves by pushing up bond yields.

Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney, in his debut speech on Wednesday, announced new measures to boost lending in the U.K. and said the central bank is ready to step in with fresh stimulus if the country's economic recovery falters, The Wall Street Journal reported. Once again, however, his message seems to have fallen on deaf ears: U.K. government bonds fell and traders stuck to bets that the Bank of England won't be able to keep its pledge to hold interest rates at a historic low until 2016. Mr.

The Bank of England's new governor, Mark Carney, is taking his message that interest rates will remain near rock bottom over the next three years directly to businesspeople in the heart of Britain, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mr. Carney heads to the former industrial city of Nottingham in England's east Midlands on Wednesday for his first public speech since taking the helm of the central bank on July 1. The appearance before the city's chamber of commerce comes three weeks after his pledge to keep interest rates to a record low until U.K. unemployment falls to 7%.

Depending on where one stands in the debate on the rising cost of housing in Britain, Paul Thomas and Abigail Walker, first-time home buyers, are either part of the solution or part of the problem, the International Herald Tribune reported. To buy a £248,000, or $386,000, two-bedroom house in Oxfordshire, west of London, Mr. Thomas, a 38-year-old electrician, and his 25-year-old partner, Ms. Walker, who works in an accounting office, are making use of a government program called Help to Buy.

Airfare search startup Everbread has been placed into insolvency in the UK after a four-year run trying to make in-roads into the world of travel shopping IT, Tnooz.com reported. The London-based company (TLabs here) was officially wound up with a notice to the UK’s Companies House on 14 August this year and its affairs are now in the hands of accountancy firm Carter Backer Winter. Documents state that the company’s liability to creditors is estimated to be in the region of £8.7 million.

McCarthy & Stone announced on Tuesday it has completed the restructuring of 518.9 million pounds ($813.55 million) of debt, reducing the debt burden of the UK retirement home developer by 350 million pounds, Reuters reported. As part of the transaction, a group of 24 institutional investors in the company have injected 367 million pounds into the business and refinanced a further 160 million pounds with a new five-year term loan facility. A core group of these investors comprising Goldman Sachs, Anchorage, TPG and Alchemy Partners now own over 50 percent of the business.

The government has come under fire for abolishing a tax on top earners after data released on Tuesday showed companies delayed paying employees 1.7 billion pounds in bonuses until the tax cut took effect, Reuters reported. Bonuses are traditionally paid between December and March, the so-called "bonus season", but an Office of National Statistics (ONS) report revealed that a number of companies deferred payouts until April, after the top income tax rate was reduced from 50 percent to 45 percent.

Dissent within the Bank of England's interest-rate setting panel fueled investor doubts Wednesday over whether the central bank can stick to its new governor's pledge not to raise interest rates until joblessness in the U.K. falls sharply, The Wall Street Journal reported. New BOE Gov. Mark Carney, in his debut news conference last week, outlined a major shift in the central bank's policy framework, vowing to keep interest rates at record lows at least until the U.K. jobless rate falls to 7%. BOE officials predict such a drop could take until 2016.