They eased 4p to 432p yesterday on the surprise news of Mr Fink's departure, valuing the London-based company at £8.24bn. At slightly more than $1.3bn, Man's profits before tax for the year to the end of March were 51 per cent higher than over the previous 12 months.Man fortunes have soared in line with those of the wider hedge-fund industry. His replacement will be named in due course, Man said.Mr Fink, who will be 49 this month, took over in 2000. Since then, funds under management have surged from $4.7bn to $54bn (£37bn).

Over the six years, Man has delivered an impressive total return to shareholders of 487.4 per cent, against 18.6 per cent by the FTSE All Share index.The shares have more than quadrupled during that time. After forging the former commodities broker into the world's biggest listed hedge-fund manager over the past two decades, he is to step down in April.

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Mr Fink will become non-executive deputy chairman and retain his role as chairman of the strategic investment committee of Man Investments.Peter Clarke, the finance director, will become Man's chief executive. He has worked for Man for 13 years and joined the board in 1997, becoming finance director three years later and group deputy chief executive last year. Stanley Fink, consistently among the best-paid of Britain's chief executives, revealed yesterday he is to take a back seat at Man Group. Ceri Stanaway, at Which?, said: "Many phone shops try very hard to sell this insurance, but consumers should not be pushed into it and should remember that they can buy cover from independent insurers."Carphone said last night it had updated its procedures and sent all the missing information to customers who did not originally receive it It said customers had not lost out.. Charles Dunstone, the chief executive, said the FSA response felt "a bit like a sledgehammer to crack a nut."However, insurance experts warned mobile phone insurance was often poor value and riddled with exclusions.

"As a result of the extended delay in fixing the problem, more than 100,000 customers were potentially disadvantaged."Senior Carphone executives are privately seething about the fine and the fact the FSA had chosen to criticise it so publicly. The company said it had approached the FSA at the start of last year asking to be regulated, even though sales of mobile phone insurance are not automatically policed by the watchdog. She said while Carphone had first become aware of the problem last March, it had not been rectified until October.The failures affected customers who bought policies through a sales company the retailer had acquired. Carphone finally updated procedures at its E2Save sales channel on 24 October."Carphone Warehouse should have been open and provided complete and timely information to us," Ms Wilson said. Almost half did not even receive a summary of their insurance cover, setting out the main features of the policies they had paid for. The regulator takes breaches of the rules on the information that must be sent to policyholders after the sale of an insurance policy particularly seriously because, by law, customers must be given an opportunity to consider whether the cover they have bought it suitable for their needs.Sarah Wilson, director of retail firms at the FSA, said the £245,000 fine reflected the seriousness of the mis-selling case. It operates Prudhoe Bay on behalf of a consortium including Conoco Phillips and ExxonMobil.. Carphone Warehouse has been ordered to pay a fine of almost £250,000 after regulators found it had been breaking the laws governing sales of mobile phone insurance for more than 10 months.