Business week in pictures

Greyhound buses are coming to Britain for the first time in their 95-year history, with passengers able to ride the famous American bus between London and the south coast from £1 Photograph: Graham Turner

Britain's public finances plunged far deeper into the red last month than the City expected, recording a record July deficit of £8bn as tax receipts slumped. This was the biggest July shortfall since records began in 1993 in a month that traditionally records a surplus Photograph: Darren Staples/Reuters

UBS, the world's biggest wealth manager, has been forced to hand over 4,450 accounts that contain a staggering $18bn (£10.9bn) to American tax investigators. The information haul represents a triumph for the US Internal Revenue Service Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Lloyds Banking Group stunned staff as it abandoned plans to close its network of Cheltenham & Gloucester branches. The closure of the 164-strong network was first announced in June, putting some 1,600 jobs at risk Photograph: Chris Ison/PA

Consumers' concerns about the recession appear to be on the wane, with middle-class shoppers who tightened their belts and experimented with discount supermarkets last year making their way back into Waitrose Photograph: Frank Baron

World demand for gold is falling as credit-crunched consumers cut down on luxury spending such as jewellery. Demand from investors is also dwindling as hope of an economic recovery has created an appetite for riskier assets, leaving traditionally safer ones, such as gold, behind Photograph: Robert Garvey/Corbis

Ryanair has jettisoned Manchester passengers from most of its network after scrapping nine out of ten routes at the UK's fourth largest airport Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Europe

BP and Shell are being told to tear up their membership of the American Petroleum Institute (API) in protest at the organisation's attempts to incite a public backlash against Barack Obama's energy and climate change bill Photograph: AP

Hopes of Britain's manufacturers emerging from deep recession were boosted this week when the CBI reported that the outlook for factories was at its most upbeat in more than a year Photograph: David Levene