United Kingdom

U.K. care home operator Southern Cross Healthcare Group PLC has finally collapsed under the weight of its unpayable rent bill, saying Monday that it plans to cease operating and hand its homes over to landlords. The arrangement promises to resolve the financial turmoil at one of the U.K.'s largest private care organizations, with 31,000 residents in its homes, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported.

Struggling retailer Homeform, owner of Moben Kitchens and Dolphin Bathrooms, appointed Deloitte as administrators on Wednesday and sold its Sharps Bedroom business, Reuters reported. Homeform, which has over 160 showrooms in the UK and 1,208 staff, said last month it was looking to appoint administrators after trading in its kitchen and bathroom units was hit by cash-strapped customers curbing spending during tough economic times. Deloitte, a business advisory firm, said Moben, Dolphin and another of Homeform's businesses, Kitchens Direct, had been closed down and were up for sale.

Bidders for over 600 Lloyds Banking Group branches have less than a week to pitch for a deal that could incur costs of 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) for the part-nationalised British bank, Reuters reported. The costs of transferring and implementing the branches are likely to be far higher for Lloyds if it sells the branches to a start-up bank, which potentially gives an edge to established rivals who have infrastructure in place. Lloyds has been told to sell 632 branches by European regulators as the price of being bailed out by the taxpayer.

The UK government faces a test of its determination to drive through its austerity programme when teachers and civil servants strike on Thursday over plans to reform public sector pensions, Reuters reported. Many schools across the country will remain closed and air passengers face delays when immigration officials join a walkout that could involve up to 750,000 workers.

Struggling British women's fashion retailer Jane Norman has become the latest victim of a downturn in shopper spending on discretionary items, collapsing into administration, Reuters reported. A spokeswoman for business advisory firm Zolfo Cooper said on Monday it had been appointed administrator of the firm, which trades from over 200 stores and concessions in the UK and Ireland, employing over 1,600. Press reports have said British department store group Debenhams may be interested in buying the Jane Norman brand and residual stock.

Britain is facing a tsunami of house repossessions as soon as interest rates start to rise, one of the country's leading bankers has warned. Richard Banks, the chief executive of UK Asset Resolution (UKAR), the body that runs the £80bn of mortgages bailed out by the taxpayer during the banking crisis, also said in an interview with the Guardian that the Labour government's pleas at the start of the crisis for lenders to keep families in their homes was forcing some homeowners further into debt.

Lloyds Banking Group’s exposure to the riskiest kind of mortgages is more than double that of any of its top five rivals in what is potentially a ticking time bomb for Britain’s largest high-street lender, the Financial Times reported. Data published last week by the Bank of England showed that loans representing more than a quarter of Lloyds’ mortgage book are worth at least 90 per cent of the property value they are secured against.

Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday the coalition government would press ahead with plans for public sector pension reform in face of warnings from union chiefs of the biggest wave of strikes in almost a century, Reuters reported. Union bosses have said many of Britain's 6.2 million public sector workers could take part in coordinated strikes later this year over the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition pension proposals.

A group of former Halliwells partners have been issued with a demand from the firm's administrators BDO to repay around £21m related to a controversial 'reverse premium' property payout, LegalWeek.com reported. The letters, which were received by a number of former partners this week, demand the repayment of money linked to a multimillion-pound payout awarded to around 40 former Halliwells equity partners. The £24.5m payment was given to Halliwells' equity partners in 2007 when the firm sold a stake in the freehold of its new office in Spinningfields.

The Bank of England said on Thursday that a small British bank with just 250 depositors, Southsea Mortgage and Investment Co Ltd, had been placed in the bank insolvency procedure and had ceased trading, Reuters reported. The BoE stressed Southsea's failure was due to particular problems at the company rather than broader market issues. "The failure of Southsea ... follows a deterioration in its financial position as a result of management decisions and the firm's specific business model," the BoE said in a statement.