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Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, March 9th.

And this is your FT News Briefing.

EY's plans to split are on hold. China's president plans to boost the country's tech sector

in order to compete with the U.S.

and the FT's Chris Giles briefs us on Britain's low growth economy.

The economy in the UK will be alone in not growing at all, not a job between 2019 and 2025.

I'm Mark Filipino and here's the news you need to start your day.

Global accounting giant EY kept delaying plans to split its auditing and

consulting businesses. Now that plan is on pause.

Sources told the FT there's been fierce fighting over how much of EY's tax business

should stay with the audit side after the split. EY had planned to shift most of its tax practice

to the consulting and advisory business, but EY's American auditors campaigned for more

of the tax practice to stay on the audit side. That's partly because of U.S. regulations.

Yesterday the head of EY's U.S. business told partners that the deal needs to be reworked.

Chinese president Xi Jinping is preparing to shore up financial stability

and boost his country's tech capabilities. Big changes to financial and tech regulation

were revealed this week at the annual gathering of China's rubber stamp parliament.

Here's the FT's Joe Lehi in Beijing.

The government is reinforcing its Ministry of Science and Technology and the idea of that

is to try to get it to become more innovative and to concentrate on achieving scientific breakthroughs.

...