Business week in pictures

In a big week for the banking sector, Alistair Darling and the City watchdog defended the decision to keep secret the £61.6bn of emergency loans handed to the Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS at the height of the financial crisis last year Photograph: Andrew Winning/guardian.co.uk

A bank advertises its upcoming opening in Holborn, London. Banks will also be forced to reveal how many of their employees earn more than £1m a year under new laws expected to show that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of City bankers are made millionaires each year Photograph: Anthony Devlin/guardian.co.uk

A man repairs a cash machine outside a bank in London. Millions of bank customers hoping to be refunded their overdraft charges were dealt a surprise blow when the supreme court handed high street banks a landmark victory over the Office of Fair Trading Photograph: Luke MacGregor/guardian.co.uk

Prime Minister Gordon Brown speaks at the CBI conference. Prime minister Gordon Brown and Conservative leader David Cameron clashed over the best way to tackle Britain's biggest budget deficit since the second world war. Speaking at the Confederation for British Industry's annual conference in London, Brown said that turning off the life support measures, implemented in the midst of the financial crisis, too soon could damage any hopes of recovery Photograph: Toby Melville/guardian.co.uk

Heavy fog near the Dubai Marina in 2007. Dubai World, the government-owned conglomerate behind the former P&O ports operator as well as some of the most ambitious building projects in the Gulf state, is asking creditors for a six-month 'standstill' on its debt repayments Photograph: Steve Crisp/guardian.co.uk

Rain clouds gather over Blagdon Reservoir near Bristol. Households will see a £3 fall in average water bills to £340 before inflation over the next five years, industry regulator Ofwat said Photograph: Matt Cardy/guardian.co.uk

A boy carries a crate with empty bottles in the Liberian capital Monrovia. War-torn Liberia, one of the world's poorest countries, is being sued in London's high court over a $20m debt contracted by its government more than 30 years ago Photograph: Urs Flueeler/Keystone/guardian.co.uk

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announces the new Apple iPhone 3G in 2008. Tesco plans to have the Apple iPhone in shops in time for Christmas and has promised to bring 'a bit of value' to the mobile phone market Photograph: Paul Sakuma/guardian.co.uk

Shell's new Pearl GTL project in Qatar. Shell's new chief executive has called on governments to intervene in carbon markets, the first time the Anglo-Dutch oil company has acknowledged that markets cannot be left to set the price of pollution Photograph: guardian.co.uk

A man displays gold bangles at a jewellery shop in Karachi. Commodities such as gold and copper are booming as investors seek refuge from economic uncertainty and buy alternative assets. Industrial metals are also benefitting from bets that an improvement in the world economy will lead to an upturn in demand Photograph: Akhtar Soomro/guardian.co.uk

Supporters of the web site The Pirate Bay, one of the world's top illegal filesharing websites, demonstrate in Stockholm in April 2009. Record labels are pointing to the dramatic rise in music sales in Sweden, just months after the country introduced anti-piracy laws, as evidence of what a similar crackdown in Britain could do to the flagging market Photograph: Fredrik Persson/Scanpix-sweden/guardian.co.uk

Job seekers fill out forms at the Operation: Hire Veterans Career Fair at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City. The head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has warned that the global economy is still in a 'highly fragile' state following the financial crisis, and could face further turmoil in the months ahead. Photograph: Mario Tama/guardian.co.uk

Passengers disembark from a National Express train in London. The Department for Transport will not allow National Express to extend the East Anglia franchise beyond March 2011, when it comes up for renewal. The decision will cost it three years of profits from the line, which runs services from London's Liverpool Street station to several towns and cities including Peterborough, Norwich, Great Yarmouth, Ipswich and Chelmsford Photograph: Oli Scarff/guardian.co.uk

QinetiQ, the defence technology company recently under fire over a Nimrod plane crash in Afghanistan, faced flak in the City when it issued a profit warning over its full-year figures Photograph: guardian.co.uk

An Opel logo through barbed wire at the Opel assembly plant in Antwerp. General Motors has said it plans to cut more than 9,000 jobs across Europe and slash production capacity by a fifth at its Opel and Vauxhall plants. Speaking after discussions on the future of the company Nick Reilly, head of GM Europe, said that a layer of management would be scrapped Photograph: Sebastien Pirlet/guardian.co.uk