Simon Dawson/Bloomberg. A pedestrian carries an umbrella decorated with a Union flag as she passes a store window announcing discounted goods for sale in London.

The FTSE 100 company, which was fined �10.5m in April for mis-selling to thousands of customers, also rejected calls to forgo any executive bonuses, instead cutting them by 40pc.

Lloyds Banking Group, the UK's largest retail bank, said it would not need to issue new shares or sell other securities to meet fresh regulatory capital requirements.

More than 50 English beaches have met tough new EU standards to receive Blue Flag awards, recognising their high standards and water quality.

Tax authorities from the UK, US and Australia are to join together to investigate tax evasion from some of the wealthiest people in the world after receiving huge amounts of data from a whistle-blower.

Britain's underlying budget deficit widened in April, dealing a blow to Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne as the International Monetary Fund prepares to deliver its verdict on the U.K.

South African inflation was unchanged in April as a decline in the value of the rand added to the cost of imports, countering the effect of lower international fuel prices.

Nationwide has more than doubled its provisions on commercial real estate loans to almost �500m and warned of weak demand and declining property values.

In words that will underline his status as a monetary activist and fuel speculation that he will try to relaunch quantitative easing (QE) when he arrives in the UK, Mr Carney applauded Japan's �bold policy experiment� to boost dramatically its own QE programme ...

The taxman had expected to save �8bn by 2015 from reducing errors and fraud in the administration of tax credits, but is expected to miss its target by �5bn.