Business week in pictures

A city worker sits under a giant sculpture in London's financial district. The news for Gordon Brown grew bleaker as it appeared the UK would be the last to come out of recession, after Germany, France, Japan and the US all returned to growth Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Chancellor Alistair Darling meets staff during a visit to the Northern Rock headquarters, in Gosforth, Newcastle. Northern Rock secured its return as a major high-street lender with an £8bn government loan and the green light from the European commission to split off its toxic assets into a bad bank Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

Marchers cross the Chicago River on Michigan Avenue as they protest during the American Bankers Association convention in Chicago, Illinois. Demonstrations took place outside the US bankers' annual convention, but delegates from the ABA still refused to accept the blame for the crisis Photograph: Tannen Maury/EPA

Palm Beach Fire and Rescue respond to an emergency call at Jeffry Picower's mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. The fight to compensate victims of Bernard Madoff's $65bn (£40bn) Ponzi scheme was thrown into uncertainty following the death of Picower, the biggest beneficiary of the fraud, who was found in his swimming pool Photograph: Drew Angerer/AP

Traders work in the S&P 500 pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's Chicago Board of Trade. A new ethnographic study by Karen Ho revealed the inner life of American bankers. Highly educated and hard-driven people, Ho described them as living "liquid lives" Photograph: John Gress/Reuters

Andrew Higginson, left, chairman of Tesco Bank and Benny Higgins, chief executive, visited Newcastle to announce the creation of 1,000 jobs at its customer service centre created for Tesco Bank's insurance customers Photograph: Craig Connor/Vismedia/PA

The owner of high-street off-licences Threshers and Wine Rack, First Quench, is fighting to stave off an administration that could threaten thousands of jobs Photograph: Martin Child/Photographer's Choice/Getty Images

Julian Baggini, who spent Christmas alone at terminal three, Heathrow Airport, waiting for a flight to New York. British Airways sought to reassure potential customers planning flights over the busy Christmas period, after the trade union Unite announced it is to ballot 14,000 BA members for industrial action Photograph: Linda Nylind

A Budweiser sign at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis. The Budweiser brewer was accused of encouraging a "locker room" and "frat party" corporate atmosphere in a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by a former senior executive responsible for tailoring the company's public image Photograph: Jeff Roberson/AP

An ornate facade of a Natwest bank branch in St Helier, Jersey. Britain's tax havens were read their last rites when a Treasury-commissioned report told them to raise new taxes if they are to survive the economic crisis Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

Leo Quinn, chief executive of De La Rue at the London Stock Exchange, who will be replacing Graham Love, the CEO of defence research technology firm Qinetiq, who quit the company just hours after it was criticised by the report into the RAF Nimrod crash. Qinetiq claimed the move was not related to the report's findings Photograph: Rex Features/Rex Features

Workers at oil company Shell's offices in London. Shell announced it is to cut 5,000 jobs – many of them in the UK – as part of a major cost-cutting drive, after announcing a 72% slump in third-quarter profits Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

James Bowers, dressed as Uncle Sam, asks people if they can spare a trillion, outside the front of Federal Hall, near the New York Stock Exchange. The United States economy, the world's largest, unofficially emerged from recession in the third quarter of the year, growing at a better-than-expected annualised pace of 3.5% Photograph: Chip East/Reuters

A Volvo S80L at a Volvo showroom in Beijing. The Swedish carmaker looks likely to go into Chinese hands after its owners Ford chose a consortium led by industrial group Zhejiang Geely as the preferred bidder for the loss-making business Photograph: Liu Jin/AFP/Getty Images

A boy tries out a Wii game with his father at the Big Apple Comic Con in New York. Nintendo's profits plummeted by more than half in the six months from April, as slumping sales of its Wii console forced the video game firm to slash its profit forecast for the full year Photograph: Natalie Behring/Reuters