It is fitting that one of Gavin MacDonald’s last services to the bank he had worked at his entire career should have been to help prevent its collapse as it in September teetered on the brink of becoming the largest casualty of the global financial crisis.

MacDonald, Morgan Stanley's global head of merger and acquisitions who died of a heart attack on Friday, played an instrumental role in helping arrange a $9bn (€7.1bn) investment in the bank by Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.