The Financial Services Authority is set to receive much-needed clarity tonight when George Osborne, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, reveals plans for the country's future regulatory system in a move that will at last shed some light on whether FSA will be stripped of all or most of its powers and essentially split into two or even three new bodies.

The UK's Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition Government last month pledged in its policy programme to create a single economic crimefighting agency to tackle work that is done "among others, by the Serious Fraud Office, Financial Services Authority and Office of Fair Trading".