Business week in pictures

Women exposured to toxic waste protesting in August 2006. The Guardian revealed evidence of a massive cover-up by the British oil trader Trafigura, in one of the worst pollution disasters in recent history. Internal emails show that Trafigura, which yesterday suddenly announced an offer to pay compensation to 31,000 west African victims, was fully aware that its waste dumped in Ivory Coast was so toxic that it was banned in Europe Photograph: Legnan Koula/EPA/Corbis

The shadows of shoppers outside Harvey Nichols store in Edinburgh, Scotland. UK retail sales stalled last month in a sign the recession is still forcing consumers to rein in their spending. The Office for National Statistics reported flat sales volumes in August, compared with July, a figure which disappointed the City. Analysts had been expecting a 0.2% monthly rise Photograph: Murdo MacLeod

People walk past the Bank of England in the City of London. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned Britain is facing the tightest squeeze in public spending since the 1970s, after leaked Treasury documents showed a major deterioration in the nation's public finances Photograph: Sang Tan/AP

An aerial view of the Cayman Islands. Two top bankers are leaving Barclays to manage a fund in the Cayman Islands that is buying $12.3bn (£7.47bn) of the bank's most troublesome assets. The deal was criticised by analysts who questioned its complexity, but it will enable the British bank to report a more stable performance in future Photograph: David Doubilet/National Geographic/Getty Images

A protester dressed as a banker stands outside Leinster House in Dublin, during a debate on the government's proposed Nama legislation. Irish taxpayers will hand over tens of billions of euros to the Republic's banks in order to write off high risk loans owed to them by the country's builders and speculators. The rescue plan will entail the country's new and controversial National Asset Management Agency buying bad debts from the banks to the tune of €77bn Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

Mount Pleasant postal sorting office in London. Some 20,000 workers demanding higher pay and job security have staged sporadic strikes since July. Unemployment jumped to its highest level since mid-1995, pushing the jobless rate in Britain up to nearly 8%, official data has shown. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the jobless total on the broad International Labour Office measure rose by 210,000 in the three months to July, taking the total to 2.47 million. That rise was broadly in line with those of recent months and economists said there was little to suggest that rises in unemployment were slowing Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

Gordon Brown finally said today that a Labour government would have to cut spending after the general election as his aides revealed that the pre-budget report in November would set out detailed government spending priorities for the three years up to 2013-14. The prime minister told the TUC conference in Liverpool the government would "cut costs, cut inefficiencies, cut unnecessary programmes and cut lower priority budgets" but he would not support cuts in "vital frontline services on which people depend" Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Red balloons are released outside the Financial Services Authority offices in London's Canary Wharf . Small investors who lost money in the collapse of Lehman Brothers were protesting about being sold high risk financial products. Directors at Britain's largest companies have been insulated from the worst effects of the financial meltdown hitting their employees and shareholders by a series of often complex remuneration policies, the Guardian's annual survey of boardroom pay revealed. Controversial measures include rises in annual basic salaries averaging 10%, revised bonus performance targets to reflect tougher economic conditions and, increasingly, big cash handouts of up to 40% of basic pay in lieu of generous pension contributions Photograph: Kevin Coombs/Reuters

MD Alex Warner of Greyhound at the company's UK launch. The brand is one of the most iconic in the western world, redolent of road trips across the wide expanse of the US and endlessly celebrated in literature and pop songs. However, the maiden trip of Greyhound in the UK was rather more prosaic than New York to Los Angeles, or Chicago to Miami as a hardy bunch of travellers, and a few media types, boarded the Southampton to London Victoria service Photograph: Linda Nylind

A visitor flips a picture on a giant interactive screen on the stand of Deutsche Telekom at the International Consumer Electronics Trade Fair. Kraft Foods' £10bn surprise bid for Cadbury has set the market alight, helping to push the FTSE 100 through the 5000 level for the first time in nearly a year and fuelling talk that another wave of mergers and acquisitions is around the corner. "The deal is back," say big investment banks such as Citigroup and Nomura, which have told their clients that a return of merger activity would underline growing confidence in the economy. Just a year after the demise of Lehman Brothers crash, the City is daring to believe that business is getting back to normal Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP