London’s property market stagnated for a second month in August as buyers became reluctant to accept high asking prices amid the prospect of increasing borrowing costs, Hometrack Ltd. said, Bloomberg News reported. The survey of real-estate agents showed values were unchanged in the capital in a “stark” change from the sharp increases over the past year that helped propel national prices to a record. Across England and Wales, values grew 0.1 percent in August, the same as in July, bolstered by gains in commuter towns in the southeast.

Almost 1,000 complaints were made against insolvency practitioners in the last 12 months, representing an increase of 25% on the previous year, according to figures from the Insolvency Service, Accountancy Age reported. The Insolvency Service revealed a steep rise in complaints about practitioners since it launched its Insolvency Practitioners' Complaints Gateway in June 2013 as a single point of entry for complaints about insolvency practitioners.

London home sellers cut asking prices by the most in more than six years this month, adding to signs that the property market in the UK capital is coming off the boil, the Irish Times reported. London values fell 5.9 per cent from the previous month to an average £552,783 (€688,269), the biggest drop since December 2007, property website Rightmove said today. Nationally, prices declined 2.9 per cent, a record for an August. While property demand usually weakens during the summer, Rightmove said the slump this year was steeper than it expected.

The revival of subprime lending has gathered pace after Provident Financial bought a car finance group that provides loans to customers who would be shunned from traditional lenders, the Financial Times reported. It follows a period of rapid growth for Provident, a doorstep lender that has benefited from rising profitability by offering loans and credit cards to riskier and credit-impaired borrowers. Provident said it had bought Moneybarn, the subprime car finance company, for £120m. It is its first acquisition since the financial crisis.

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office said on Thursday that it had reached a second settlement in a series of civil claims brought by two brothers after a flawed investigation into the collapse of the Icelandic bank Kaupthing during the financial crisis, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported.

Zodiac Pool Solutions SAS, the Paris-based swimming pool and spa manufacturer, filed Thursday for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. as part of its debt-restructuring effort now under way in the U.K., The Wall Street Journal reported. Formerly known as Zodiac Marine & Pool, Zodiac Pool filed for protection under Chapter 15—the section of the Bankruptcy Code that deals with international insolvencies—in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del.

The original Mastertronic actually disappeared in the mid-90s, but it was reborn in 2004 when one of its co-founders, Frank Herman, helped negotiate the purchase of the name from Sega. Sadly, the UK-based games publisher, now known as the Mastertronic Group, is once again facing a bleak future, as it has announced plans to close its headquarters, lay off 40 percent of its staff and completely exit the business of publishing physical copies of games, PC Gamer reported.

Top bankers in Britain will become directly accountable for their actions under proposals unveiled by regulators on Wednesday, with those behaving recklessly facing jail, Telegraph.co.uk reported. The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) will also publish final rules on clawing back bonuses paid to bankers found guilty of misconduct, and consult on closer scrutiny of how awards are made. Bonuses handed to “code staff”, those who take the biggest risks at a bank, will be subject to a clawback lasting seven years from when they were awarded, Sky News reported.

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office said on Friday that it would pay 3 million pounds, or about $5.1 million, to settle civil claims brought by a property developer following a flawed investigation into the collapse of the Icelandic bank Kaupthing during the financial crisis, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported.

The number of recorded personal insolvencies has reached its lowest level in nearly a decade, according to official figures, BBC News reported. The Scottish government said more people were using its debt payment programmes to manage their finances. Enterprise Minister Fergus Ewing described the figures as "encouraging". However, the figures also showed a rise in corporate insolvencies, with 250 Scottish firms failing in the second quarter of 2014.