The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) are split 6-3 against a rate rise for the second month, with opinion divided on how to tackle soaring inflation without snuffing out growth.

Lighthouse boosted profits in 2010 after offloading its pensions division and shedding some of its lower-performing advisers.

The FSCS has pledged to use the money it receives from the £57m Keydata compensation deal it struck with N&P to partly refund advisers' levies.

A member of the AIFA RDR Working Group has launched a public attack on the organisation saying it is disproportionately influenced by pro-fee IFA firms and takes a "Stalinist approach" to crushing dissent.

Norwich & Peterborough (N&P) has agreed to pay compensation directly to all customers it sold Keydata products totalling £57m, exceeding the building society's previous outside estimates for the bill.

Forecasts for corporate earnings growth in Europe and leading emerging markets are being scaled back by analysts.

The "wrong kind of inflation" will mean the government has to borrow significantly more over the medium term than planned, George Osborne will be forced to admit in the Budget.

Households are suffering their biggest drop in living standards for 30 years, according to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

The Chancellor will use Wednesday's Budget to announce the biggest clampdown on tax avoidance since 2004, raising twice as much as the £500m a year predicted when the initiative was launched last December.

An HMRC policy to target "deliberate tax defaulters" could prompt a wave of human rights cases against the taxman, a City law firm says.