Hargreaves shares leap 15% on profits boost

(Update) Shares in Hargreaves Lansdown jumped 15% in early trading after the company reported a significant jump in profits and hiked its dividend.

The wealth manager was trading 64.3p higher at 496.3p, an increase of 14.9%, in early trading, although the shares remain significantly below the 580p seen prior to the FSA's platforms paper last month. In August, a decision by the FSA to effectively press ahead with a ban on payments by fund managers to platform providers - payments which make up a third of Hargreaves' revenues - saw investors offload shares in the company en masse. But investors sense value again this morning after Hargreaves posted strong full-year results and said it was confident regulatory changes will have litt...