UK housebuilder Barratt Developments has reported a loss of almost £600m in the second half of 2008 after having to write down the value of land it owns.
It saw a pre-tax loss of £592.4m, down from a £192.4m profit a year earlier.

Former TV golden girl Anthea Turner and husband Grant Bovey have been forced to sell their £5million country home after the couple lost £100million in the credit crunch.
The 57-acre property has been put up for sale with Hamptons International.

Britain is facing its worst financial crisis for more than a century, surpassing even the Great Depression of the 1930s, one of Gordon Brown’s most senior ministers and confidants has admitted.
In an extraordinary admission about the severity of the economic downturn, Ed Balls even predicted that its effects would still be felt 15 years from now. The Schools Secretary’s comments carry added weight because he is a former chief economic adviser to the Treasury and regarded as one of the Prime Ministers’s closest allies.

When Paul Watson, 38, was given a choice between staying in his cramped northwest London flat and moving to a new home at the seaside, there was little contest. The air in Great Yarmouth was cleaner, the people were friendlier and the cost of living was far lower. But the clinching factor was Harrow Council’s willingness to fund his move.
Mr Watson said yesterday: “They paid my first month’s rent, deposit and removal costs, which came to about £3,000. I couldn’t have afforded to do it myself. I picked the property that I wanted and the council sorted everything out. Now I’m a five-minute walk to the beach and people actually stop and say hello to you on the street.”

A decision to site a new Welsh prison in Gwynedd is being welcomed as one of the largest investment projects in the region for a decade.
The jail on the former Ferodo brake factory near Caernarfon will be able to hold 1,000 inmates, and is estimated to be worth millions to the economy.