Britain's banking bosses should face jail if their decisions force fresh bailouts, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards says today.

By Ian Chua. SYDNEY | Wed Jun 19, 2013 7:17am BST. SYDNEY (Reuters) - Japanese stocks rose on Wednesday, thanks to a positive lead from Wall Street and a softer yen, outperforming the rest of Asia which anxiously waited for clarity on the U.S.

LONDON - London shares closed higher on Tuesday as investors hoped the two-day Federal Reserve Board meeting will not spark too sharp a reduction in the Fed's stimulus programme to shore up the United States economy, dealers said.

Dalian Wanda Group, a Chinese developer, is investing 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) in a British luxury yachtmaker and a London site where it plans to build Western Europe's tallest residential building.

John Swinney announced an independent Scotland would have the same flat-rate pension of �144 per week planned by the UK but would increase it annually by the highest of earnings growth, inflation or 2.5 per cent.

Two firms in BBC documentary series The Call Centre were fined a total of �225,000 today for making nuisance sales calls. The Information Commissioner's Office said there had been 2,700 complaints about Nationwide Energy Services and We Claim You ...

Let's hope Charlotte Hogg enjoys her 15 seconds of fame. Her appointment as the first chief operating officer in the Bank of England's history is certainly newsworthy.

So-called core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was 0.2 per cent last month and 1.7 per cent for the last 12 months.

Aggreko. �17.52 -39p. Questor says BUY. Aggreko disappointed some with a pre-close trading update on Tuesday in which it said full-year expectations remained unchanged.

The chairman of Lloyds Banking Group has told MPs that there was no political pressure for the bank to select the Co-operative Group as the preferred bidder for the hundreds of branches it must sell under state aid rules.