George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, has promised to move cautiously in dismantling the Financial Services Authority, to ease City concern that the Conservatives would cause disruption by scrapping it.

Osborne has told FSA chiefs that that he will not try to break up the agency on day one of a Tory government, and that moves to spin off a new consumer protection agency would take some time.

His offer of a transition period lasting months and possibly several years is designed to reassure Lord

Turner, the FSA chairman, who has echoed wider fears in the City of the Tories creating regulatory upheaval.

Financial Times