Debt-mired JJB Sports put itself up for sale on Thursday and warned investors their shares may be worthless, placing the sports goods retailer at risk of becoming another big-name British retail casualty, Reuters reported. The company has been rocked by funding issues, falling sales and stiff competition as UK store chains battle weak consumer spending, muted wage growth and government austerity measures. A string of household retail names including Woolworths and MFI have gone out of business in recent years, undermined by price-cutting from supermarkets and the Internet.

Barclays Plc (BARC) faces a criminal probe into fees it paid in 2008 to Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund as the bank sought to raise money to avoid a government bailout, Bloomberg reported. The Serious Fraud Office, which prosecutes bribery and white-collar crime, told the London-based bank it has “commenced an investigation into payments under certain commercial agreements between Barclays and Qatar Holding LLC,” the lender said in a statement today. The investigation is another legal pitfall for Britain’s second-biggest lender by assets after it paid U.S. and U.K.

Britain's wealthiest people should face an emergency tax to avoid a breakdown in social cohesion as the country fights an "economic war" caused by a longer than expected recession, Nick Clegg has said. In the first interview by a senior member of the cabinet to mark the new political season, the deputy prime minister told the Guardian he is embarking on a battle to persuade his Tory coalition partners of the need to ensure the rich shoulder a greater burden of the economic pain.

Mouchel, the motorway maintenance company, has sold its assets to a new company owned by banks and management, ensuring the survival of the 120-year-old business, the Financial Times reported. KPMG, the administrator, said on Saturday that the assets had been sold to a newly incorporated company, MBRL Ltd, whose lenders include Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group. The banks will wipe out £83m of debt in exchange for an 80 per cent stake in the new, delisted company, while the existing management will own the remaining 20 per cent.

Barclays is set to assume control of debt-burdened French poultry group Doux next month, a union said on Thursday, enabling the UK bank to pursue a turnaround plan for the business supported by the family that controls the company, Reuters reported. Barclays is expected to take an 80 percent stake in Doux, which went into court administration in early June, in exchange for forgiving debt of 140 million euros ($175 million). The plan received implicit backing from a French court on Aug. 1. "The transformation of Doux's Barclays debt into 80 percent of its capital should be implemented on Sept.

Britain’s public finances deteriorated in July as corporation tax receipts plunged, highlighting the coalition government’s struggle to balance the books while the economy is in recession, the Financial Times reported. Public sector net borrowing is £9.3bn higher so far this year than at the same stage last year, excluding some distorting effects, putting strain on the coalition’s plan to close the structural current deficit within five years.

Businesses are increasingly using a little known procedure to stave off the threat of insolvency. The number of company voluntary agreements, which allow businesses to renegotiate their debts, increased by 32% in the last year to 924 from 699 in the previous year, according to accountancy firm Wilkins Kennedy, The Guardian reported. To enter a CVA a company's arrangement for repaying creditors must be approved by three-quarters of them and supervised by an insolvency practitioner.

UK budget hotel chain Travelodge agreed a 635 million pound ($999.6 million) debt restructuring that will give lenders control of the business but confirms a significant loss for its Dubai owners who bought the company in 2006. The announcement comes after lending sources told Reuters in February that the group's lenders would assume control of Travelodge after it breached loan agreements in 2011.

Pressure on George Osborne for a softening of the government's hardline economic strategy intensified on Wednesday after leading economists who backed the chancellor's plans in opposition called for immediate action to lift Britain out of double-dip recession, The Guardian reported. In a blow to the chancellor, almost half the economists who strongly supported the Conservative party's deficit-reduction proposals in the runup to the 2010 election said it was time for a rethink and urged the Treasury to take advantage of low borrowing costs to boost spending on infrastructure projects.

UK unemployment levels dropped to their lowest in a year as the Olympic Games created jobs, showing the labour market's resilience in the face of deepening recession, the Irish Times reported. Jobless-benefit claims fell 5,900 to 1.59 million, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. The jobless total measured by International Labour Organization methods fell to 8 per cent in the second quarter from 8.1 percent in the three months through May.