So Sir Richard Branson may finally be about to get his hands on Northern Rock. It has been a long time coming. The bearded entrepreneur - or at least the people he has running his financial services arm - has had to wait four years to get this close again... more
US private equity house JC Flowers has bought the insurance broking arm of Belgium's KBC Group - Fidea - as the bank off-loads assets to repay €7 billion (£6.1 billion) in bailout funds... more
Taxpayer-owned mortgage bank Northern Rock says it has received a number of indicative takeover offers which could see it returned to the private sector by the end of this year or early next, five years after it was nationalised... more
Northern Rock, the British bank nationalised during the credit crisis, is preparing to launch a series of mortgages that offer up to 90% of a property's value... more
Comment: JC Flowers, the US private equity house run by Chris Flowers, is set to unveil a £50m deal to take over the Kent Reliance Building Society - even though he doesn't seem the type... more
The Kent Reliance building society confirms private equity group JC Flowers is planning to take control of it in what would be a first strike by the investment group to break into UK High Street banking... more
Trevor Matthews unleashed a flood of red ink in his first full-year results as chief executive of Friends Provident, but insisted the insurer is turning around... more
Analysis: Little-noticed amid the financial market meltdown, 26 sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) met in Santiago, Chile, last month where they agreed to prepare a set of principles for their future operations... more
Insurance: Insurance giant American International Group is looking for a bridging loan of $40 billion (£22 billion) from the US Federal Reserve as it tries to sell assets to rebuild its balance sheet... more
Would you buy a used life policy, or even a new one, from this lot? The mugs at the top of our life assurance companies appear to have hardly a clue what they're doing... more
Exclusive: After high-profile allegations this season, Charlton's manager is pleased the issue is now being addressed but says the authorities still have plenty of work to do
Morning:
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