Franz Müntefering’s return to frontline politics – reappointed in September as chairman of the centre-left Social Democratic party – must have dismayed private equity investment chiefs.

In 2005, Mr Müntefering described private equity firms as “locusts” that were stripping the country’s industrial base. It caused an immediate controversy and an enduring image. But times may be changing. When Lone Star, the debt and property investor, bought the IKB bank in August for a price lower than the one that had been mooted, public anger seemed more directed at the government’s expensive bailout of the stricken bank – a victim of the subprime crisis – than at the US buy-out firm.