Even as David Cameron, the leader of the UK political opposition, pledges to bring the much lauded US-style bankruptcy proceedings to the UK, a multi-billion dollar US industry is looking enviously at the UK courts’ abilities to solve their problems.

Orion Finance last week became the first US-based member of this industry whose trustee managed to find a way to use a UK court to settle a dispute between creditors and so allow the process towards a restructuring or reorganisation to begin. Orion is one of a band of floundering structured investment vehicles (SIVs), the specialist funds set up to exploit the difference between cheap short-term funding and higher-yielding investments in financial debt.