Sir Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, has cast doubt over the figures for the Project Merlin, suggesting they overstate the banks’ level of support to business.

A US regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, sued 17 international financial groups, ranging from Bank of America to Barclays, alleging they mis-sold almost $200 billion of mortgage-backed securities and demanding compensation for billions of dollars of losses.

* The US economy failed to add jobs in August, according to an unrelentingly bad payrolls report, raising the stakes for Barack Obama, the US president.

* Halliburton, the US oil services company, has filed a lawsuit against BP over last year’s Gulf of Mexico accident.

* Sir Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, has cast doubt over the figures for the Project Merlin, suggesting they overstate the banks’ level of support to business.

* Nature Valley, a cereal bar brand owned by General Mills, joined the likes of Coca-Cola and Samsung as an Olympic sponsor this week.

* News Corp has made its first boardroom changes since the News of the World phone hacking scandal; Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, the second-largest shareholder in Facebook, will stand for election at the annual meeting on 21 October, when Kenneth Cowley and Tom Perkins will step down.

* Shares in Asterand more than halved this week after the provider of human tissue for drug research companies cut its full-year earnings outlook, broke its banking covenants and parted ways with its chief financial officer.

* SABMiller has accused takeover target Foster’s of publishing “misleading and deceptive” information in its financial results last week.

* The European Union has banned oil imports from Syria, the most significant economic sanctions imposed on the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

* International lenders put Greece on notice that it is in danger of losing its next €8 billion tranche of bail-out loans without taking action to catch up with its austerity programme and plug a new black hole in this year’s budget.

* Jason Geddis, a former metals trader at Dresdner Kleinwort, successfully challenged a move by the UK’s Financial Services Authority to fine him £25,000 and ban him from trading on the grounds that his actions were a serious abuse of the market.