Camera specialist Jessops called in administrators PwC on Wednesday, becoming Britain's first high street casualty following a tough Christmas for retailers, Reuters reported. The group, which operates from 192 stores and has around 2,000 employees, has seen demand for its digital products come under pressure from the rising use of camera phones and online rivals. Many British retailers have struggled recently as inflation, muted wages growth and government austerity measures squeeze household budgets.

David Cameron will damage Britain's fragile economy if he demands major changes that could threaten the country's relationship with the European Union, business leaders said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. In an open letter, the heads of some of Britain's biggest companies said Britain can't afford to quit a market of 500 million people that buys half of its exports. Other countries in the 27-nation bloc would probably reject Cameron's attempts to claw back powers from Brussels, isolating the country from its biggest trading partner, they said.

Trustees to the UK Coal pension schemes have been given the right to monitor the business risks of the company’s newly formed property arm and to intervene in company strategy where needed, under the terms of an unusual corporate restructuring, the Financial Times reported. Keith Jones, chairman of the UK Coal trustees, said that formal arrangements have been put in place allowing for oversight of both the core coal business and its property arm, which is 75 per cent owned by the schemes.

British parliamentarians will this week quiz UBS investment banking boss Andrea Orcel, former CEO Marcel Rohner and other past and present executives at the Swiss bank as part of their inquiry into industry standards, following a run of scandals that rocked UBS's London arm, Reuters reported. UBS was last month fined a record $1.5 billion (931.3 million pounds) by U.S. and UK regulators for rigging Libor interbank interest rates, more than three times the fine imposed on Barclays in June for manipulating Libor.

Finance chiefs at big U.K. firms plan to further bolster their balance sheets in 2013 because of continuing uncertainty about Britain's economic prospects, according to a survey published Monday, damping hopes for an investment boost to drive economic growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. A quarterly survey of chief financial officers at 112 of the U.K.'s biggest companies by business services firm Deloitte LLP found executives rate cash flow and controlling costs as their top priorities for the year ahead.

David Cameron has thrown down the gauntlet to Paris and Berlin, warning that he would block moves to closer eurozone integration unless Britain was allowed to repatriate some powers from the EU, the Financial Times reported. The prime minister said on Sunday it would be “difficult but possible” to renegotiate a better membership deal for Britain when the EU begins talks on a new treaty to deepen political and economic co-operation in the eurozone.

U.K. lenders increased the availability of mortgages and company loans “significantly” in the fourth quarter as the Bank of England’s credit-boosting program began to take effect, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. An index of the availability of secured loans to households rose to 26.2 from 21.9 in the third quarter, the Bank of England said in its quarterly Credit Conditions Survey in London today. A measure for corporate loans jumped to 29.4 from minus 5.5. Both are at the highest level since the survey began in the second quarter of 2007.

Global mergers and acquisitions rose to the highest level in four years this quarter, as a surge in U.S. deals provided ground for optimism and salvaged what had been the worst year for takeovers since the financial crisis, Bloomberg News reported today. Companies worldwide have announced $691.9 billion in purchases in the final three months of the year, the most since the third quarter of 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Lending by U.K. banks to companies fell sharply in November, underscoring the fragility of the British economy and raising doubts about the prospects of the Bank of England and U.K. Treasury's flagship program to boost the credit supply, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Figures from the British Bankers' Association today showed lending to companies outside the financial sector fell by £3.1 billion ($5.0 billion) in November, the steepest drop since June.

The government is considering a radical overhaul to the insolvency process in the wake of Comet's collapse, according to business secretary Vince Cable, The Guardian reported. Answering business questions from MPs, Cable said that the demise of the electricals retailer had caused "great distress" and hinted that it might be necessary to rethink the UK's insolvency regime after reports that administrators made millions out of the collapse. But he added that a report into the affair would not be made public.