The British government announced on Thursday it would increase its oversight of a broad array of financial benchmarks in the foreign exchange, fixed income and commodity markets, including making it a criminal offense for traders to manipulate them, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported.

Former board members of Barclays have been called on to give evidence to the UK’s anti-fraud agency as part of a probe into the bank’s dealings with Qatar over an emergency cash injection at the height of the financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. The Serious Fraud Office has served Section 2 notices on directors who were on the board when Barclays sought £5.8bn from Qatari investors in 2008 – enabling the bank to avoid a bailout.

Eco City Vehicles said Mercedes-Benz had terminated a financing and trading deal making the British firm the sole distributor of the Mercedes Vito model that is licensed for use as a London taxi, in the latest blow for the stricken company, Reuters reported. Its shares have been suspended since Friday when it said that its One80 subsidiary was facing potential administration, leading to "uncertainty as to the group's financial position and prospects".

Britain's budget deficit widened in August compared with a year earlier, a sign the nation's economic recovery has yet to be felt in its public finances, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Office for National Statistics said Tuesday the U.K.'s budget deficit widened to £11.6 billion ($18.95 billion) in August from £11 billion a year earlier, as higher spending, interest payments and investment offset only a small pickup in tax receipts. The U.K. economy is expected to expand 3.1% in 2014, according to a range of independent forecasts compiled by the U.K.

Banks, insurers and other finan­cial services firms operating across Europe face extra hundreds of mil­lions of pounds of extra tax costs, following a European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling yesterday, City A.M. reported. The ruling means services supplied between a group’s headquarters and its branches may now be subject to VAT. Until now, services such as IT and call centre operations provided to a bank from foreign office were not charged the 20 per cent tax, as they were deemed to be within the same “VAT group”.

John Caudwell, the outspoken founder of Phones 4U, has called for the markets regulator to investigate whether the “bully boy” mobile phone industry acted in collusion to cause the demise of the high street retailer on Monday, the Financial Times reported. Phones 4U’s collapse into administration has put the jobs of almost 6,000 people and the future of 550 UK stores at risk – making it the largest retail failure on Britain’s high streets since the demise of Comet in 2012.

Panic has hit the British market over the uncertainty around the upcoming Scottish referendum with investors pulling out $27 billion out of UK financial assets in August — the biggest capital outflow since the Lehman crisis in 2008, The Times of India reported. The London-based consultancy CrossBorder Capital has confirmed the biggest drain of financial assets since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. On Thursday, Scotland will vote in the historic referendum to decide whether it would continue to be part of the United Kingdom or become an independent country.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney can’t get away from the housing market, Bloomberg News reported. As he argues there is no immediate need to raise interest rates, central to his case is the mountain of debt financing property. Home loans account for almost 90 percent of the 1.45 trillion pounds ($2.3 trillion) owed by U.K. households. In London, where the average home costs 500,000 pounds, first-time buyers are paying almost nine times their annual income to get onto the housing ladder.

Scotland's two biggest banks are joining a growing chorus of businesses warning about the impact of the breakup of the U.K.'s more than 300 year-old union, The Wall Street Journal reported. Lloyds Banking Group PLC said Wednesday it would move the bank's legal headquarters to London from Edinburgh in the event of a "Yes" vote for Scottish independence on Sept. 18. Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC will make a similar announcement Thursday morning, according to a person close to the bank.

If investors felt the first flutters of nerves last week over Scotland’s independence referendum, they are now on high alert, the Financial Times reported. The publication of the first poll to put the pro-independence campaign in the lead prompted a sharp fall in the pound on Monday and a sell-off in the shares of companies with Scottish exposure. It also led to a marked shift in investors’ expectations for the timing of the first rise in UK interest rates.