The Bank of England has kept interest rates on hold for August, and also held off from any more stimulus measures, as had been expected. Its rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has voted to maintain rates at the historic low of 0.5%.
Michel Barnier, the European commissioner in charge of financial regulation, is expected to bring forward changes to his market abuse directive and regulation within in the next weeks, the Financial Times said on Monday.
The deputy governor of the Bank of England (BoE) has said he did not give Barclays instructions to lower its Libor submissions in 2008. Paul Tucker said no government minister had asked him to lean on Barclays over its inter-bank lending rates. But he also told MPs that the BoE and the government feared that Barclays may need a bailout.
The Bank of England has announced on Thursday it will pump a further £50bn into the UK economy over the next four months through its quantitative easing (QE) program to try to help the economy.
China's central bank cut interest rates for the second time in two months to bolster an economy widely expected to record its sixth successive slide in growth in April-June.
British banker Bob Diamond has revealed that one of his big fears during the 2008 global credit crisis was that his bank, Barclays, would be taken over by the British government.
UK Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond suddenly quit on Tuesday over an interest rate-rigging scandal that threatens to drag in a dozen more major lenders but suggested the Bank of England had encouraged his bank to manipulate the figures
The Bank of England has resisted injecting further emergency liquidity to the UK economy as optimism over finding a solution to the Euro zone debt crisis grew.
Britain fell deeper into recession than initially thought in the first quarter of 2012 due to a slump in construction output, raising the likelihood that the Bank will opt to inject more stimuli to protect the economy from the Euro zone debt crisis.
Bank of England policymakers on Thursday decided against pumping more cash into Britain's recession-hit economy, preferring to sit tight after a surprise spike in inflation.