British prosecutors filed criminal charges against three former bank traders for alleged fraud, opening a new front in a global investigation into alleged rigging of benchmark interest rates, with more charges in the pipeline, The Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office said Monday that it charged three former Barclays PLC traders with conspiracy to defraud for their alleged roles rigging the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.

British public bodies such as the environment agency, the armed forces, police and government departments would have to shed almost half their staff if the government went ahead with planned spending cuts that leave education and health care largely unscathed, a respected think tank said Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Creditors in Punch Taverns are weeks away from agreeing a major debt-for-equity restructuring designed to relieve the stricken pubs group from its £2.3bn debt overhang, The Telegraph reported. A major bondholder group - which speaks for investors including Standard Life, M&G and Aviva - said that a restructuring plan is “well advanced.” The comments came despite the 11th hour collapse of a rival restructuring plan put forward by Punch Taverns, the London-listed operating company which provides the beer to more than 4,000 leased pubs across the UK.

An English subsidiary of troubled building group, Siac, is seeking court protection from its creditors, according to reports, the Irish Times reported. West Sussex-based Graham Wood Structural, owned by the Irish building group, has filed notice of its intention to appoint administrators. Such a move means that it will get protection from any legal action by creditors seeking to recover their debts from the company. Graham Wood specialises in complex structural steel projects. The business lost £1.5 million in 2011 and £1.2 million in 2012.

British and Dutch authorities have reignited the controversial dispute over the collapse of online lender Icesave at the height of the financial crisis in 2008 by filing a lawsuit for up to IKr1,000bn (£5.6bn) against Iceland’s bank guarantee fund, the Financial Times reported. Iceland’s guarantee scheme, TIF, said on Monday that the UK was seeking IKr452bn while the Netherlands wanted IKr104bn. Both countries are also seeking interest and costs in the five-year-old dispute.

Barclays will begin to hand out bonuses on Friday to its 140,000 staff around the world from a bonus pool expected to be bigger than last year's, The Guardian reported. In a move that could inflame relationships with shareholders after the bank's £5.8bn cash call last year, the bank is thought to be planning to hand out larger bonuses to some employees than a year ago to prevent top staff quitting for higher-paying rivals. This time a year ago the bank handed out a total of almost £2.2bn in bonuses – £1.8bn for the 2012 financial year and another £300m in deferred payments.

Hopes that Punch Taverns might finally be able to put its debt woes behind it appeared to be dashed on Wednesday as lenders to the pubs group dismissed a financial restructuring plan as “unsignable” and “flawed”. Bondholders reacted angrily to a last minute plea by Stephen Billingham, the executive chairman of Punch Taverns, to back a deal to restructure the group’s £2.3bn debt pile, which will be put to the vote next Friday. Punch, which is the second biggest pub landlord in the UK with some 4,000 properties, last month published a final proposal to solve the group’s complex debt problems.

Christie's has withdrawn 85 artworks by Spanish surrealist Joan Miró from its auctions in London this week, after an uproar in Portugal over the government's move to sell the works in an attempt to cut its debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. The decision, announced on Tuesday just hours before the Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist evening sale, represents a blow to Portugal's coffers—as well as an embarrassment for one of the world's largest auction houses during the most important time of year for the London art market.

Hibu, the Reading-based Yellow Pages company, has placed six US subsidiaries into Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection as the firm attempts to restructure its overseas operations, following the firm’s UK restructuring which started last month, IT Pro Portal reported. Hibu filed with the US Bankruptcy Court in New York, listing over $1 billion (£600 million) in assets and liabilities. Just over half of Hibu’s revenue comes from the US, where it operates the “Yellowbook” (the US version of the Yellow Pages directory) across most states. The firm employs almost 5,000 personnel in America.

A Hull-based legal firm has been wound up by the High Court in Manchester for abusing the UK insolvency regime, Insolvency News reported. An investigation by The Insolvency Service found Lovell Hill & Co LLP (LCH) had been offering bankruptcy relocation services to Germans seeking to take advantage of the shorter bankruptcy discharge periods in the UK; an act known as bankruptcy tourism. Acting as bankruptcy relocation advisers, LHC assisted German nationals who wished to wrongly claim their Centre of Main Interest (COMI) was in England and Wales for bankruptcy purposes.