In mid-2008, Michael Zaoui resigned as vice-chairman of Morgan Stanley’s institutional securities groups. The plan was to set up an advisory mergers and acquisitions boutique with his rainmaker brother Yoël – but he wanted to make sure the market was exactly right.

That meant waiting. It was not until 2013 that he judged that M&A activity was picking up enough to justify opening the boutique. It looks as if he got it right - the business racked up more than $80 billion in deal credit in its first full year of operations.