Business week in pictures

David Cameron's hopes that rising job prospects would help to draw a line under the social unrest on Britain's streets were dashed by the latest official figures, which revealed a sharp increase in unemployment Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

SABMiller is to take its £6.2bn takeover bid for Foster's, spurned two months ago by the Australian brewer, directly to shareholders in a hostile move that heaps intense pressure on the ailing beer group. The world's second-largest brewer, which own brands such as Peroni, Castle, Miller Lite and Grolsch, was rebuffed by Foster's in June Photograph: Greg Wood/AFP/Getty Images

Prime Minister David Cameron visits a Lidl supermarket that was looted and set on fire during the recent riots in Salford. Britain's hard-pressed consumers are trading down to cheaper brands and making fewer visits to supermarkets as higher inflation erodes their spending power. The market research company Kantar Worldpanel said shoppers were buying less and migrating to low-cost retailers such as Aldi and Lidl. Photograph: Jon Super/Reuters

Famous British lingerie firm Rigby & Peller, whose clients include the Queen as well as Hollywood royalty such as Scarlett Johansson, has been snapped up by one of its suppliers Photograph: Jeffrey Blackler/Alamy

The Bank of England's monetary policy committee voted unanimously to leave interest rates unchanged this month, with the two hawkish members of the committee abandoning their calls for borrowing costs to rise. Spencer Dale, the Bank's chief economist, and external policymaker Martin Weale fell back in line with the rest of the MPC and voted for interest rates to remain at their record low of 0.5%
Photograph: Graham Turner/The Guardian

Sir Mervyn King shrugged off a fresh rise in inflation on Tuesday when he expressed fears about the impact of turbulence in the financial markets and the debt crisis in the eurozone on an already weak UK economy Photograph: Tony Gentile/Reuters

U2 frontman Bono's investment firm could be looking at a profit of almost $800m on its stake in Facebook Photograph: Axel Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

The City watchdog has fined Sir Ken Morrison £210,000 for failing to disclose share sales worth more than £400m in the supermarket group founded by his father Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Rick Perry, the Texan governor who hopes to become the next president of the United States, told a gathering in Iowa that it would be disastrous for the Federal Reserve to print more electronic money to fuel another round of asset purchases Photograph: Mladen Antonov/AFP/Getty Images

Technology pupils at Malmesbury School, Wiltshire, get to grips with the disassembly of a vacuum cleaner provided by the James Dyson Foundation as a teaching aid. The company founded by Dyson has joined BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce in urging the government to boost industrial research and education in the UK amid signs that efforts to rebalance the economy towards manufacturing are faltering Photograph: Sam Frost for the Guardian

Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy urged closer economic co-ordination and called for a Europe-wide tax on financial transactions as Germany and France pledged to prevent a disintegration of the ailing single currency Photograph: Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Images

Morgan Stanley warned that the global economy is teetering on the brink of a recession, and slashed its growth forecasts. Fears that the world is sliding into a double dip recession weighed again on global stock markets Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA