FINANCIAL SERVICES

* Halifax, Britain’s largest mortgage bank, said it reached an agreement to buy troubled life insurer Equitable Life for as much as $1.47 billion. But U.S. financial services group GE Capital, which had failed to win over Equitable’s management, was considering striking back with a “substantially” higher and restructured proposal, an industry source said. Equitable maintained that the deal with Halifax is final. GE Capital is a unit of U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co.