Few business executives are accorded a place in the history books and still fewer have a business manoeuvre named after them. No one calls a huge banking transaction "a Morgan." Nor is a giant oil find "a Rockefeller".

One man who has lent his name to the vocabulary of commerce is Gerald Ratner, the jewellery tycoon who infamously described one of his company's products as "total crap". The business, renamed Signet, was back in the news last week after private equity outfits Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Apax Partners confirmed they were considering a £2bn (€2.9bn) bid.