Last week headhunters rushed to Canary Wharf to set up makeshift offices as Lehman Brothers’ 5,000 London-based staff took in the news that the firm had collapsed and that management in New York had abandoned the bank’s international businesses to their own fate.

Christian Meissner, the co-head of the European and Middle Eastern business who had been promoted less than a week earlier, is reported to have told staff that the “dream was over” and to “move on” as the operations were put into the hands of administrator PwC.