For a man who has come back from the near-dead, Arun Sarin looks in remarkable shape. Trim and muscular (he was a mean boxer in his youth), the 53-year-old executive is wearing a broad smile as he prepares to step down from running Vodafone, the mobile phone group.

Barely two years ago, few observers in the City of London or the British press had a good word to say about him. Amid declining profit margins and slowing revenue growth, the Indian-born, naturalised American chief executive was written off as arrogant, prickly and out of touch with the market; in short, a busted flush.