Taxpayers will underwrite mortgages totalling hundreds of millions of pounds under government plans to "unblock" the housing market and revive the flagging economy.

The head of operations at the Financial Ombudsman Service has left amid concerns of high staff turnover at the organisation, which is now seeking a replacement for the £140,000 a year role.

Capita Financial Managers, which wants Arch Cru investors to accept a payoff linked to the sale of assets from the suspended fund range, has admitted that three-quarters of the remaining value of the cells is uncertain.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined an insurance broker £195,117 for insurance fraud and banned him from carrying on regulated financial services.

Thousands of UK resident holders of Swiss bank accounts will receive letters from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) this week threatening a thorough investigation into their tax affairs.

The Treasury has sold Northern Rock plc to a consortium led by Richard Branson's Virgin Money for £747m, at a £650m loss on the £1.4bn of capital it injected into the bank.

Shoehorning clients into a simple one-to-ten risk profiler fails because real attitudes to risk drift with every new piece of bad financial news

The FSA today set out 13 examples of when the legacy commission ban will kick in - and a narrow set of circumstances under which advisers will be allowed to receive trail commission in the post RDR world.

IFAs hit social networking site Twitter to express their anger after an undercover investigation found financial advice given by high street banks and building societies is failing consumers.

Hundreds of thousands of Halifax customers could receive payments of up to £4,500 after the bank said more people might have been misinformed about changes to mortgage rates than it had originally thought.