Britain’s key financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority, has tried to ease investor fears about worldwide corporate collapses and scandals, saying the UK is better regulated than the US. The fall of equity markets globally has hurt the London stockmarket, but the FSA says investor fears have been “overdone”.

Chairman Howard Davies said although accounting scandals or actions to fraudulently inflate company earnings could occur in the UK, the British market “does appear to be buffeted by winds from across the Atlantic, rather than by any domestically generated bad weather”.