LONDON - British bankers could soon be facing harsher penalties for behaving badly. After a year which has seen major scandals involving rate-rigging, money-laundering and rogue-trading rock the UK's financial industry, an influential parliamentary committee recommended Wednesday that senior bankers should be held more accountable for their bank's actions. One measure, it said, should be a new criminal offence of "reckless misconduct" — one that could carry a prison sentence.

British finance minister George Osborne on Wednesday ordered a review into whether state-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland should be split into 'good' and 'bad' banks, with the latter housing written-off assets, as part of the government's plan to return RBS to the private sector. Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne, addressing business leaders in London, added that the coalition government was also considering options for selling its stake in Lloyds Banking Group (LBG), which like RBS won a massive state bailout following the 2008 global financial crisis.

By David Milliken and Matt Scuffham LONDON (Reuters) - The fate of Britain's two state-controlled banks will become clearer on Wednesday, when finance minister George Osborne is likely to start the clock ticking for the sale of the government's stakes. But while Osborne will attempt to point to a healthier future for Britain's economy and banking sector in his annual speech to financiers in the evening, reminders of recent troubles will not be far away.

It's not bubbly-cute any more, but Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew's new official signature, to go on all new US banknotes, should meet boss President Barack Obama's admonition not to debase the currency. Revealed by the Treasury Tuesday, Lew's signature for the greenback still had some of the characteristic swirls that drew howls when he was first nominated in January. But -- thankfully to many -- it was a far cry from the eight-loops-and-a-tail that he scribed on White House memos in his previous job as Obama's chief of staff.