This northeast England town has long boasted it has the largest office complex in Europe. But the 8,000 employees who fill two gray buildings here known informally as "the Ministry" all work for the government. And their boss, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, is about to send many of them home for good. Most work for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, the tax agency. Their jobs are the legacy of decades of spending—especially by the prior Labour Party government—that pumped public money into Longbenton and similar places as factories closed.

A U.K. High Court Judge granted an injunction against Liverpool owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr. that would quash a U.S.-based legal effort by the owners to stop the sale of Liverpool to New England Sports Ventures, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The injunction was sought by Liverpool's chief creditor, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, and the team's board of directors, which has approved a sale of the team to NESV despite the objections of Hicks and Gillett.

Halliwells' now infamous Spinningfields property deal is being investigated as the administration of the now-defunct law firm enters its next phase, LegalWeek.com reported. The Spinningfields landlord, Credit Suisse Asset Management (CSAM), is seeking advice from Eversheds real estate litigation partner Will Densham to see if any money can be recovered from Halliwells. This includes looking over the controversial multimillion-pound payout received by Halliwells' equity partners in 2007. Halliwells took out a 25-year lease on the building at 3 Hardman Square, of which 23 years remain.

Singapore billionaire Peter Lim increased his offer for Premier League soccer club Liverpool FC to £320 million ($508 million), hoping to trump a bid by New England Sports Ventures LLC of the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported. Meanwhile, lawyers for current co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett said in a London court that they had received a bid from a U.S. hedge fund, as they tried to prevent Liverpool's board from completing a sale of the club to NESV. The board last week voted to accept a roughly £300 million bid from U.S.

The battle for control of Liverpool went to court on Tuesday, with a bank trying to force through the sale of the Premier League club to the owners of the Boston Red Sox over the objection of the current American owners, the Associated Press reported. Royal Bank of Scotland, which holds the bulk of Liverpool's debt, is seeking a court order preventing co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr. from removing two of the three rival board members supporting a 300 million-pound ($476 million) sale to the Boston group.

Britain's banks are set to accelerate the sale of distressed assets or portfolios of loans, restructuring experts said at a Reuters Summit this week. Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds and others are showing more interest in selling businesses or loans to shrink their balance sheets, especially as new capital rules will make holding them even more of a burden. "It's happening already," Matthew Prest, managing director at investment bank Moelis & Co said at the Reuters Restructuring Summit on Thursday.

A new, more draconian tax on bonuses should be slapped on banks, a leading Liberal Democrat said tonight after the Royal Bank of Scotland chairman admitted that regulation was the only way to restrain the annual bonanza for bankers, the Guardian reported. Amid estimates that the City would pay out £7bn in bonuses this year, Lord Oakeshott said the moment had now come to reintroduce a tax on bonuses which, when imposed on the banks last year, brought in £3.5bn for the exchequer.

British-based oil drilling contractor KCA Deutag has appointed four restructuring experts as directors, just as debt renegotiation talks are set to intensify, sources close to the negotiations said, Reuters reported. KCA Deutag, owned by oil industry services company Abbot Group and trying to reach an agreement with lenders on $2.16 billion of debt to avoid a covenant breach, announced the new non-executives on Monday.

George Osborne will tomorrow vow to stick by his controversial plan to wipe out Britain's £109bn structural deficit in one parliament, saying the alternative of delay would only hit the poor and consign the country to a decade of debt, the Guardian reported. In his speech to the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, the chancellor will announce that every Whitehall department will have its head office staff cut by a third, promise to give the armed forces the tools to finish the job, and dismiss Britain's public service structure as designed for the 1950s.

Dutch life insurance and pension giant Aegon said Tuesday it will have restructured its U.K. operations by the end of 2011 by closing two businesses and cutting senior management jobs, as it seeks to sharply cut costs at the struggling business, Dow Jones reported. Aegon reiterated that it intends to cut costs by 25%, detailing that it will do so by closing its third-party pension administration and employee benefits software businesses and scrapping "a number" of senior management position by the end of next year.