Fund managers’ profits will be slashed… business will be sucked overseas… British jobs will be destroyed… turnover in small company stocks will fall… their cost of capital will rise… and more British jobs will be destroyed.

The Financial Conduct Authority's proposal that the cost of equity research should be unbundled from dealing commissions will result in an apocalypse of biblical proportions. We will be lucky to avoid plagues of boils and locusts. Or so say many fund managers.