Selling the family silver can be painful. From a dispassionate perspective, though, the buyer who drives up the price deserves gratitude. If he can be persuaded to buy bric-a-brac from the attic, even better. Perhaps that is why sovereign wealth funds – and state-backed investors, more broadly – are regarded less as the shady puppet-masters of six months ago, and more like friends in need.

The announcement on Thursday that Dow Chemical was to place its plastics business in a joint venture with Kuwait’s state oil company was greeted with enthusiasm by the markets. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority’s injection of $7.5bn into Citigroup last month was received more impassively, although that perhaps says more about Citigroup’s woes than the merits of foreign backers. But we are some way from the protectionist paranoia that greeted Dubai Ports World’s takeover of P&O in 2006, and that is welcome.