The International Monetary Fund has called on George Osborne to boost infrastructure spending urgently to help fuel Britain's economic recovery, but to the relief of the Treasury toned down its previous critique of the chancellor's fiscal strategy.

Ben Bernanke said the US Federal Reserve could start slowing the pace of its asset purchases �in the next few meetings�, but only if the labour market showed sustained improvement.

Damp squib or analytical pragmatism? That was the verdict being weighed up by observers on Wednesday, as Britain's two part-nationalised banks - Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group - told the market they would not need to raise fresh ...

Nationwide has increased its share of the British mortgage market to a record level, helped by government-funded programmes to support housebuyers, such as the Bank of England's Funding for Lending Scheme.

David Cameron has called a Europe-wide agreement on tackling tax avoidance as a "turning point", after Google's boss urged politicians to "sort" the system.

Britvic is to cut up to 400 jobs - 15 per cent of its workforce - as part of efforts to bolster its fortunes as a standalone company should competition authorities squash its proposed tie-up with Scottish peer AG Barr.

The timing of Easter and the freezing weather seen at the start of the month caused retail sales to fall by 2.2 per cent on an annual basis.

Ed Davey, the UK energy secretary, has warned that Scotland could lose billions of pounds in subsidies for renewable energy projects if it voted for independence, putting its green energy revolution at risk.

Investments in shale gas drilling could yield an industry worth nearly �4bn a year to the UK economy and create more than 70,000 jobs, according to a new report from the Institute of Directors (IoD), becoming a "new North Sea" energy business in the process ...

Stansted should replace Heathrow as the UK's hub by transforming the Essex airport into a four-runway operation with improved rail links at a cost of �23bn, according to proponents of the scheme.