“Beware the fury of a patient man”, wrote the 17th-century English poet John Dryden. He might as well have been describing the frustration of shareholders in investment banks, whose patience is once again being taken for granted – and stretched to breaking point.

The latest set of results from the big investment banks has underlined what many investors have feared for some time. Cut through the calamitous headlines about a collapse in fixed-income trading volumes and you have an industry which, five years on from the financial crisis, has still failed to come to grips with its problems and to plot a realistic path to recovery.