The securities lending industry is waking up to the fact that it will never be a glad confident morning again. A year ago an industry already reduced by shrinkage of both supply and demand was confident its forecasts of further liquidity haemorrhaging from European equity markets would bounce the European Commission into modifying its proposed short-selling regulation.

Yet when the final version was agreed on 21 February, it was clear that an expensive and sophisticated lobbying campaign had ended in failure.