George Osborne

The Chancellor has insisted Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) bankers, not the taxpayer, must pay the fines handed out over the LIBOR fixing scandal.

Big banks will be forcibly broken up if they fail to heed new rules to ring-fence their investment arms from their consumer-facing operations, George Osborne is expected to say on Monday.

The chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has asked the government to "take stock" of its austerity programme ahead of the next Budget in March.

Advisers remain cautious about the prospects for the UK in 2013 and over the ability of Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne to lead the country's recovery, research suggests.

UK interest rates will stay at historic lows for four more years as the economy struggles to return to normal growth levels, Citi has predicted.

The Chancellor is on a collision course with bond markets over plans to change how inflation is calculated. The switch could bring the exchequer a £3.8bn windfall from a reduction in interest payments.

Senior backbench MPs are being lobbied to set up a powerful US-style committee that would scrutinise the public finances as a whole and try to head off major fiscal disasters.

A wall of cash running to tens of billions of pounds could be about to flee from government bonds into the stock market, top investors have warned.

Leaders on the country's biggest firms are more confident in an economic recovery than they were a year ago but have less faith in the Chancellor, latest polling has found.

Despite constant tinkering with pensions legislation Neil MacGillivray believes there are still opportunities.