Reports of suspected market manipulation soared by 43 percent this year as the U.K. financial regulator investigated the rigging of multiple benchmark rates, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) received 117 reports of suspected “distortion and manipulation” of markets in the 12 months to August, compared with 82 in 2012, according to Bovill Ltd, a financial services consultant in London.

The U.K.'s official statistics agency said Tuesday it plans to change the way it calculates data on the public finances, a move that will revalue the British government's debt upward by more than a hundred billion pounds, The Wall Street Journal reported. The overhaul will reverse an accounting maneuver by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne last year that lowered the government's borrowing figures in the short term. But the new debt calculations would apply retroactively and thus would be unlikely to require a policy response. Mr.

Britain ushered in a new era of banking industry oversight on Monday when MPs gave their final approval to reforms aimed at tackling the structural and cultural failings which led to the near-collapse of the country's financial sector, Reuters reported. The reforms are the result of a lengthy legislative process started after the 2007/8 financial crisis and a series of mis-selling and rate-fixing scandals which shone a light on illegal and unethical behaviour at some of Britain's banks.

British film and computer game rental chain Blockbuster said it is to close 62 stores and lay off 427 employees and warned its remaining 91 stores and 808 staff could face the same fate, Reuters reported. Private equity firm Gordon Brothers Europe, which purchased Blockbuster for an undisclosed sum in March, put it into administration on Nov. 11, when it was trading from 264 stores, employing 2,000. Administrator Moorfields Corporate Recovery said on Thursday it had not received any acceptable offers for the business.

Millions of young workers will be unable to retire until they reach 70 under new government rules, The Telegraph reported. An overhaul of the state retirement system announced on Thursday will mean that people now under 50 will have to work even longer than they had previously thought. George Osborne, the Chancellor, will announce the new rules and argue that they are one of the “difficult decisions” required to put the public finances on a secure footing in the long term.

Savers have been withdrawing money from their accounts at the fastest rate for nearly 40 years, Bank of England figures show. They took £23 billion out of long-term savings in the past 12 months, equivalent to £900 for every household in the country, The Telegraph reported. They either spent the cash – which in many cases was earning little more than 1 per cent interest – or moved it to easy-access current accounts. The Bank’s figures suggest that record low interest rates have convinced many to give up on the prospect of meaningful returns on their nest eggs.

The threat of emergency intervention by the Bank of England into the Co-operative Bank receded on Friday night after thousands of retail investors gave their backing to a £1.5bn lifeline for the troubled high street bank, The Guardian reported. The support of the bondholders is a major step towards avoiding Threadneedle Street having to step in to wind up the bank but is part of a process that will force the Co-op Group – which owns supermarkets, funeral homes and pharmacies – to cede control of its banking business to bondholders, who have been led by aggressive US hedge funds.

U.K. Treasury chief George Osborne on Tuesday gave in to parliamentary demands to enhance the Bank of England's powers to set the amount of capital that banks must hold, but he warned it against using the so-called leverage ratio to impose unnecessary burdens that might restrict economic recovery, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mr.

Royal Bank of Scotland PLC was accused on Monday of pushing small businesses into default to boost profits, putting the bank back in the firing line with government officials who only earlier this month decided the partly state-owned bank didn't need to be broken up to help boost Britain's economic recovery, The Wall Street Journal reported. A report by Lawrence Tomlinson, an adviser to Business Secretary Vince Cable, alleges that in some cases, RBS forced business customers to default on loans so that the bank could charge higher fees or seize their properties and sell them. Mr.

The rising cost of student borrowing meant that households sank further into debt this year for the first time since the financial crisis, a report has found, the London Evening Standard reported. Households' non-mortgage debt grew by 4% in 2013 to £216 billion, marking the first increase for five years and taking the average sum families owe to £8,159, according to PwC's Precious Plastic report. But taking student debt out of the figures wiped £2,259 off the typical amount households owe, bringing the average amount to £5,900 and meaning that underlying consumer debt remained flat.