The government launched incentives to help struggling home buyers on Wednesday as it looks to support growth in a real estate market it sees as key to reviving the country's ailing economy, Reuters reported. Chancellor George Osborne said Britain would commit 3.5 billion pounds over the next three years to shared equity loans for new-build homes worth less than 600,000 pounds, allowing buyers to purchase them with a 5 percent deposit. "For newly built housing, government will put up a fifth of the cost," he said in a budget speech to parliament.

Lloyds Banking Group is considering the sale of about €650 million of Irish real estate loans as the lender extracts itself from Western Europe's biggest property crash, according to a person with knowledge of the planned transaction, the Irish Times reported. The UK's second-biggest government-aided bank will have to sell at a discount, the person said without being more specific. He declined to be identified because the sale plans haven't yet been finalised. Lloyds spokesman Ian Kitts, declined to comment.

A plan to devolve potentially billions of pounds of public spending to local authorities and businesses in Britain to boost a stagnant economy won a green light from the government on Monday, Reuters reported. The Treasury said the coalition government had approved almost all the recommendations in a blueprint drawn up by Michael Heseltine, a former Conservative deputy prime minister. The scheme will see public money for projects such as housing and transport, now controlled by various government departments, pooled into a single pot from 2015.

National Australia Bank Ltd.'s restructuring of its U.K. operations is on track and the unit is now profitable, however it continues to face challenges in a difficult U.K. market, its chief executive said, The Wall Street Journal MarketWatch reported. Consumer and business confidence in Australia also remains "fragile," and both companies and individuals here will likely remain reluctant to commit to major investments until sentiment regarding the economic outlook improves, Cameron Clyne said Sunday in an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp.'s Inside Business program. Mr.

The government has launched a review of pre-pack insolvencies, the controversial practices that can enable companies to dump pension liabilities, Professional Pensions reported. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said the review, announced during a parliamentary debate, would begin in "late spring" although a timescale had yet to be set. Pre-packs involve arranging the sale of a business before an insolvency is triggered, with the transaction going through as soon as an administrator is formally appointed.

The UK government’s Insolvency Service is all but insolvent, the Financial Times reported. Experts suggest the group, which polices bankrupt companies, liquidates failed businesses and disqualifies unfit directors, would be broke had it not received an emergency injection of cash from the government. After reporting an underlying deficit of £12m last year, the agency is heading for a deficit of £5m to £7m for 2012-13, according to Whitehall officials.

The Bank of England warned on Thursday that the next phase of the UK's six-year financial and economic crisis may be triggered by the collapse of debt-laden companies bought by private equity firms in the boom years before the crash, The Guardian reported. In its latest quarterly bulletin, Threadneedle Street said the need over the next year to refinance firms subject to heavily leveraged buyouts posed a systemic threat.

British banks have been suffering amid dismal earnings, scandals and regulatory investigations, but three of the country’s largest financial firms handed out seven-figure pay packages to hundreds of employees last year, The New York Times DealBook blog reported. The disclosures this week add to the growing debate over compensation, as regulators look to rein in bankers’ pay.

Britain will resist calls to impose far stricter rules on how much banks can leverage their capital for investments and lending, insisting that there is no need to do so before 2018, Reuters reported. The government is forcing banks to limit leverage to 33 times their capital, in line with international regulations, and rejected a call on Monday from a panel of parliamentarians to stiffen the rules to curb risk-taking even more.

Britain should force all banks to split routine retail operations from riskier investment activities if a single lender abuses new rules designed to protect taxpayers, an influential panel of lawmakers said, Reuters reported. The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, which has been asked to find ways to reform banks, also said on Monday that Britain's financial regulator should be given the responsibility to decide how far banks can leverage their capital for investment and lending. The government's Banking Reform Bill is due to be debated in parliament on Monday.