The BCE buy-out held a “dirty little secret” when it was signed in late June of last year, according to people involved in those talks: the credit crunch had started to materialise but the private equity firms involved in the deal went for it anyway.

The budding crisis was easy to dismiss in the summer of 2007, when few people on Wall Street could have imagined the havoc it would ultimately wreak. But the failed takeover now marks not only the largest buy-out to disintegrate but also the one deal whose lifespan matches the duration of the credit crisis so far.