Building group Bowen’s British business owed almost €10 million to subcontractors before court-appointed administrators took control of the company, its latest figures show, the Irish Times reported. State assets agency Nama and the Bank of Ireland appointed Paul McCann of Grant Thornton as receiver to the key Bowen group companies last month on foot of a number of secured debts.

Prime Minister David Cameron blamed the worst riots in Britain for decades on street gang members and opportunistic looters and denied government austerity measures or poverty caused the violence in London and other major cities, Reuters reported. Cameron told an emergency session of parliament that police tactics had failed at the start of the rioting. Courts worked through the night to deal with hundreds of mostly young people arrested during the mayhem. "The fightback has well and truly begun," said the Conservative leader, in power for 15 months.

UK bank Lloyds has teamed up with Dublin company Green Property to help manage Irish commercial properties which have been put into receivership by the bank, the Irish Times reported. Green will offer property management services to receivers on assets in the €13 billion commercial property book at what was formerly Bank of Scotland (Ireland). It is estimated that properties supporting up to €1 billion of commercial loans in Lloyds’ Irish subsidiary could fall under Green’s management if receivers choose to avail of the company’s services.

France and Britain are most vulnerable within Europe to a rating review following the U.S. downgrade, with anaemic growth and hefty borrowing placing them among the shakiest of the world's triple-A rated lenders, Reuters reported in an analysis. Both countries have stable rating outlooks, making a sudden downgrade unlikely and markets have been so impressed by Britain's debt-cutting strategy that they have pushed its bond yields to record lows. But a surge in the cost of insuring French debt against default on Monday highlighted alarm sparked by Friday's U.S.

New laws on bankruptcy enacted last week have done little to deter bankruptcy tourism, the Independent reported. Under the old law, bankrupts in Ireland were subjected to at least 12 years of punitive restrictions, and possibly for life and even in death. A bankrupt remained a bankrupt unless discharged by the court. That could only happen if at least a portion of the debt was repaid, along with any costs that may have arisen.

UK holidays firm Holidays4u, which specialises in budget holidays and flights to Turkey, has gone into administration during the peak summer holiday season, leaving around 12,000 passengers to be repatriated by the UK airline authority, Reuters reported. The websites of Holidays4u and related Augeanflights on Wednesday said only that joint administrators had been appointed and that more information would follow.

Ever since it embarked on its ambitious austerity program in June 2010, the U.K. has been regarded as a canary in the economic coal mine. Recent data suggest that if the canary isn't exactly dead, it's certainly ailing, The Wall Street Journal Agenda blog reported. But there are some aspects of the challenge facing the U.K. that are very particular to its situation and disqualify it as a good test of austerity in general.

The International Monetary Fund's UK expert has said the government should be ready to cut taxes and boost the supply of money if Britain's flagging economy suffers a prolonged period of weak growth, high unemployment and low inflation, The Guardian reported. On the day that the monthly health check of manufacturing showed the sector sinking back into recession for the first time in two years, Ajai Chopra warned that ministers would need to be nimble if the economy performed less well than the IMF has been anticipating.

Britain's Supreme Court Wednesday dismissed an appeal by units of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bank of New York Mellon, a win for investors in a high-stakes legal dispute involving complex derivatives transactions that has divided courts on both sides of the Atlantic, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The U.K.'s Supreme Court, the nation's highest, unanimously ruled in favor of investors represented by Australia's Belmont Park Investments PTY Ltd.

Britain's recovery appears to have slowed recently and there is a risk the economy could tip back into recession, Bank of England policymaker David Miles said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. In a speech focussed on the impact of tighter bank regulation, Miles challenged the conventional notion that higher capital requirements would necessarily stifle growth, and he argued that the cost of deleveraging was much smaller than some have feared.