PRESS DIGEST - Financial Times - July 30

MORTGAGE MARKET UNLIKELY TO RECOVER SOON

In an interim report produced with the Treasury, the former chairman of HBOS HBOS.L, Sir James Crosby, said the capacity of lenders to make mortgage advances was "severely constrained", and warned that the mortgage market was unlikely to recover in the next three years.

The mortgage market could be improved by new issuance of wholesale mortgage-based securities, however, Crosby said he found no quick fixes to address the market problems.

The report coincided with figures from the Bank of England revealing a fall in the number of mortgage approvals for those moving home in June to 36,000 from 41,000 in May, the lowest since comparable figures were first released in 1993.

8 ARRESTED IN FSA INSIDER DEALING PROBE

In a sign of a tougher approach to a problem the regulator believes is rife in the Square Mile and a threat to the integrity of the markets, officials from the Financial Services Authority, along with City of London Police, arrested eight people and raided premises in London and the South East.

Those arrested include workers at Swiss bank UBS (UBSN.VX) and JPMorgan Cazenove in what the FSA described as a "major ongoing investigation into insider dealing rings".