When Ned Bowers jumped ship from US bond insurance group Radian with a plan to clean up in the booming world of credit derivatives in the summer of 2006, he was riding the crest of a market wave.

Little did he or anyone else know that a year later that wave would break violently, all but destroying his Dublin-based venture – and leaving financial players worldwide uncovering huge losses in the wreckage of this corner of the debt markets.