As the impact of the financial crisis starts to damp the expectations of the steel sector, Wolfgang Eder, chief executive of Voestalpine, Austria’s biggest steelmaker, says of the mood: “We’ve been in paradise. Now it’s over.”

Top executives of big steel companies – in Washington for the annual meeting of the World Steel Association, which ended on Tuesday – have been reacting in a sombre manner to indications that the global economy has been deteriorating at a rate faster than previously thought.