Get ready for the biggest vote in the Co-op's 170-year history. Amid the squabbles, resignations and rows over pay, the poll on 17 May on boardroom reform will take place with the organisation's finances looking ghastly, The Guardian reported in a commentary. This is where attention will soon be concentrated once the Co-op Group publishes its accounts for 2013. It is also why the group's lenders, who have remained silent so far, could yet influence the struggle for power. Group debts were £1.2bn at the half-year stage.

An independent Scotland would face an immediate debt repayment of 23 billion pounds to the UK Treasury, British media reported, citing a leading economics research body's estimate. According to newspapers including The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Times, The National Institute for Economics and Social Research (NIESR) has warned that Scotland would have to borrow 23 billion pounds in its first year of independence, at interest rates of up to 1.65 percent higher than the UK Treasury's rates.

Ulster Bank chief executive Jim Brown told the Oireachtas finance committee yesterday that it was not in the business of writing off mortgage debt for customers in arrears with their home loans, the Irish Times reported. “Writing down an arbitrary amount of debt for a small number of people while they remain in their home is not something we will do,” he said. “We do not believe that it is an appropriate solution.

Punch Taverns Plc is seeking to suspend covenants on 2.3 billion pounds ($3.8 billion) of debt to give it more time for restructuring talks with bondholders, Bloomberg News reported. The owner of more than 4,000 pubs across the U.K. wants to waive the debt interest covenant and other provisions under its securitized borrowings until Aug. 29 at the latest, according to a company statement. The company has scheduled an April 29 vote for holders of its Punch A and Punch B securitizations.

The Co-operative Bank was thrown into fresh turmoil on Monday as it delayed the publication of its 2013 financial results, and the pay deal for its new boss, for a second time, The Guardian reported. The figures had already been postponed from 26 March after the bank stunned the City by admitting last month that it needed a further £400m on top of a £1.5bn cash injection at the end of last year.

The Bank of England urged banks on Thursday to consider the risk of future spikes in interest rates when they approve mortgages, and prepared tools to rein in potentially dangerous lending, Reuters reported. British house prices have risen by around 10 percent over the past year, and the central bank said mortgages were higher as a share of home-buyers' income than at any point since 2005, although other indicators remained weaker than average.

Later this week, a consultation closes on the Insolvency Service’s proposals to update elements of insolvency regulation and alter the fees-setting mechanisms used by the UK’s insolvency practitioners, economia reported in a commentary. While the proposals on the profession’s regulation and creditor engagement are broadly on the right lines, the same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the plans to prohibit insolvency practitioners from charging fees on an hourly basis in cases with no engaged creditors or creditor committees.

The Co-operative Bank PLC was in fresh turmoil Monday after saying it needs another £400 million ($659.4 million) in capital, just months after securing a £1.5 billion rescue deal, The Wall Street Journal reported. The bank, which was saved from likely failure last year by bondholders and its part owner, Co-operative Group Ltd., said it was hit by costs around products wrongfully sold to customers and other unexpected charges, forcing it to tap shareholders for more cash.

George Osborne on Wednesday unveiled the biggest pensions revolution for almost a century, in a Budget aimed at savers and the grey vote that sent shares in insurance companies into a tailspin, the Financial Times reported. The chancellor stunned the pensions industry by announcing plans to give people far more freedom to choose what they do with their pension pot, outlining plans to change rules which effectively force people to buy an annuity at retirement.

More than £5bn in disputed tax liabilities will be dragged out of the bank accounts of tax avoiders and restored to Treasury coffers, the chancellor claimed. George Osborne hopes a tougher "pay now, argue later" approach to more than 30,000 of the richest and most sophisticated tax avoiders in Britain will help HM Revenue & Customs deal with its costly backlog of dispute cases, while generating revenues to fund measures announced elsewhere in the budget, The Guardian reported.