Business week in pictures

The soaring cost of food and transport left households £11 a week worse off last month than they were a year ago, according to a survey that reveals the erosion of family spending power. The average UK household had £166 a week of discretionary income to spend in July, according to the Asda Income Tracker – 6.4% lower than at the same time last year
Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

Alarm bells are ringing over the health of the housing market after Hometrack, the property data company, forecast steeper falls in prices this autumn – with the latest figures showing a 3.6% annual fall in August Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters

Before the banking crisis there were subsidies that helped Venetians buy costly pink and mauve plasters, pay artisan builders and erect canal-side scaffolding, but Giulio Tremonti, finance minister and chief cost-cutter in Silvio Berlusconi's government, has spent the last three years quietly stripping Venice residents of central government support Photograph: Gaertner/Alamy

Lego said the runaway success of a range of £2 lucky dip figurines aimed at those with pocket money to burn had provided the building blocks for a record year for the Danish toymaker. With a cast of characters that includes an Egyptian queen and an evil dwarf, 'Minifigures' have taken UK playgrounds by storm, helping the brand to report growth of more than 10% in the UK for the six months to 30 June Photograph: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The French manufacturer of the Virgin Trains Pendolino fleet has pulled out of the bidding to make carriages for the £16bn Crossrail project. Alstom announced its withdrawal after hopes were raised that a UK-based manufacturer will secure the next major British trains contract Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

After ploughing more than £250m and eight years into trying to crack one of the toughest retail markets in the world, Tesco has admitted defeat and announced that it is pulling out of Japan Photograph: Tesco

Shoppers on Grafton Street in Dublin: billionaire investor Wilbur Ross reckons Ireland will the first European nation to recover from the sovereign debt crisis and 'will once again become the Celtic Tiger' Photograph: Julien Behal/PA

Reforms heralding a major shake-up of Britain's banks to prevent another financial meltdown may not be implemented until after the 2015 general election, according to government sources. Arguments about the pace of change are said to have divided the coalition government, with Liberal Democrat business secretary Vince Cable pitted against the more banker-friendly Tory chancellor, George Osborne Photograph: Chris Helgren/Reuters

John Lewis is ramping up its online expansion programme by more than doubling its number of Click and Collect collection points around the country through the addition of a further 60 branches of its sister chain Waitrose Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

Hopes that BP could take the focus away from its failure to tie up a groundbreaking deal with Rosneft in Russia were crushed on Wednesday when special forces raided its main offices in Moscow. The law enforcement officers were acting with the consent of a court in Tyumen, where minority shareholders are pursuing a $3bn (£1.8bn) compensation claim over the collapse of the deal Photograph: Mikhail Voskresensky/Reuters

Hewlett-Packard's PC boss says that it would prefer to spin off its gigantic PC division, creating a '$40bn startup' which would be the world's biggest seller of Windows PCs in its own right Photograph: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Waterstone's, Britain's biggest bookseller, is ending its long running three-for-two promotion, which has played an important part in the company's marketing effort for more than a decade Photograph: Keith Morris/Alamy

Exxon, the world's largest company, and Rosneft signed a deal to develop oil and gas reserves in the Russian Arctic, opening up one of the last unconquered drilling frontiers. The deal dashes any hopes that BP had of reviving its own deal with Rosneft that was blocked in May by its billionaire partners in an existing Russian venture Photograph: Galen Rowell/Corbis