Nearly 50% of the UK's adviser community wants platforms to carry out bulk switches to clean share classes for their clients, research from FundsNetwork has discovered.

The Chinese economy grew by 7.7% in 2013, the latest figures from the country have revealed, its slowest rate for 14 years.

Barclays Wealth has acted to cut its services for clients with less than £500,000, as it follows through on plans revealed last year.

Nick Train, a long-term backer of Hargreaves Lansdown, has said the platform's assets could hit £240bn by 2020 - a figure which would mean adding £200bn in AUA over the next six years.

Platform giants Standard Life and Fidelity have attacked Hargreaves Lansdown over its new pricing structure following its release yesterday.

Hargreaves Lansdown has revealed it was offered share classes for its new 'Wealth 150+' fund range with annual management charges as low as 0.25% for active equity funds.

Nucleus is considering launching a direct-to-consumer (D2C) platform in an effort to better serve the 6,000 orphaned clients it currently redirects to Hargreaves Lansdown each year.

The UK's headline rate of inflation fell to 2% in December, meeting the government-set target for the first time since November 2009, official figures show.

Regulators are considering compiling a list of the largest asset managers worldwide which could threaten the global financial system in the event of their collapse.

The US dollar is closing in on a five-year high versus the yen, with gold heading towards a one-year low, ahead of the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve's historic December meeting.