George Osborne and Vince Cable will spell out next week the dangers of a double-dip recession caused by a drying up of bank lending to Britain's hard-pressed small and medium-sized businesses, The Guardian reported. A green paper, to be rushed out by the chancellor and business secretary before next week's parliamentary recess, will acknowledge the scale of the lending rationing crisis, which could "abort" the fragile recovery.

HBJ Gateley Wareing's partnership has approved the firm's purchase of Halliwells' Manchester commercial practice, LegalWeek.com reported. The acquisition was confirmed by a partnership vote held last Friday. The Halliwells commercial practice covers employment, intellectual property, construction, corporate, pensions and corporate recovery, and accounts for more than 300 members of staff.

B3 Cable Solutions is to close after the firm's receivers, Deloitte, failed to secure a new owner for the company. The Longford firm which manufactures copper-based cable has been based in Aghafad for three decades and employed approximately 100 full and part-time staff. The firm had traded in a challenging environment in recent years and was placed into receivership earlier this month by its English owners, the Manchester-based B3 Cable Solutions. Deloitte’s had been engaged in an extensive process to sell the business and assets of the company as a going concern.

The future of BP PLC has shifted in recent days from a death-watch discussion to a debate about how valuable the British oil giant will be after it finishes paying for the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, the Associated Press reported. BP gained temporary control of its broken well in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday and is counting on shutting it off permanently within weeks. Its shares have regained more than a quarter of the value lost in the wake of the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

Three subsidiaries of struggling Greek telecommunications company Wind Hellas have shifted their addresses and principal place of business to London from Luxembourg, in a move that could aid a potential debt restructuring, the company said Tuesday, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. News of the relocation comes as Wind Hellas conducts a strategic review, which includes the potential sale of the business and a capital restructuring, after the company's performance continues to suffer in the wake of the Greek government's austerity measures.

Prepack administrations - a U.K. process in which a business on the brink of insolvency is sold on without liabilities, such as debt - could become a feature of the European commercial mortgage-backed securities market, a conference heard Thursday, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. "I think you will see [CMBS deals] unwound quickly and cleanly through prepacks," Mark Nichol, CMBS analyst at Bank of AmericaMerrill Lynch, told a conference hosted by Fitch Ratings in London.

The number of U.K. companies collapsing has fallen to pre-credit-crisis levels as firms and lenders work to manage liabilities and the economic recovery shows signs of trickling through to businesses, according to a new survey from financial-services firm Deloitte published Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The firm's analysis, which examined all U.K. administration figures, showed that 510 companies went into administration in the second quarter of 2010, 18% fewer than in the first quarter of the year. Administration is a procedure under U.K.

Halliwells has filed a second notice of intention to appoint an administrator in a bid to buy more time to secure a sale of the firm without entering into administration, Legal Week reported. The notice was filed 7 July which will allow the firm until 20 July to conclude any potential deals with other firms. The notice will provide a moratorium on Halliwells' liabilities.

Harvey Norman Holdings Ltd is tipped to today seal its $55 million acquisition of electrical and whitegoods retailer Clive Peeters Ltd, which is in voluntary administration, Fairfax Media reported. Around $38 million of the purchase price, which will buy clearance centres and some warehouses as well as the retail stores, will be used to repay National Australia Bank Ltd, which is Clive Peeters' sole secured creditor. Unsecured creditors are expected to receive around 30 cents in the dollar, with total claims thought to be between $48.5 million and $70 million, according to Fairfax.

Britain's mountain of debt could leave the country powerless to launch another rescue bid in the wake of a fresh financial crisis, the world's central bankers warned Monday. Their "club" – the Bank of International Settlements – presented in its annual report a frightening picture of the impact of a second banking emergency on heavily indebted nations such as Britain, BusinessWeek reported on a story from The Independent.