Senior figures close to the consortium - led by Canadian infrastructure investor Borealis Infrastructure - confirmed that a second offer was highly likely after the water company rejected a sub-�5bn bid earlier this month.

More than 30 of the coalition's flagship schemes, including Universal Credit and high-speed rail, are at serious risk of failure, a report says.

Angry shareholders of HSBC on Friday bombarded the group's board with barrage of accusations ranging from financing Mexican drug cartels to supporting tax havens, slashing jobs and mis-selling products.

Households paid off �241m more mortgage debt than they borrowed in an effort to get on top of their debts. Before May last year, net lending had never been negative since the BBA started collecting the data in 1997.

The mutual needs to raise as much as �1.8bn to repair its bank's balance sheet and said on Friday that it was �undertaking an extensive review� of the business.