When you walk into the offices of the Financial Times in London, a large poster of Richard Branson greets you. He is wearing a beret, and looks wistfully into the middle distance. An advertising slogan, the FT’s own, reminds us that “we live in financial times”. But Branson’s romantic pose suggests otherwise. The man who started his business selling underground albums by mail order, and went on to become one of the richest men on the planet, is portrayed here as a harbinger of revolution. He helped change business thinking. And for that, it is only natural that he be portrayed as the financial world’s very own Che Guevara.

Such sleights of image have become commonplace, as we have travelled ever further from the days when armed insurrection was considered the height of fashion. The corporate world, nothing if not supple in its thinking, recognises an icon when it sees one. For once, that overused word is appropriate. The photograph of Guevara taken by Alberto “Korda” Diaz at a mass funeral in Havana in 1960 remains one of the most familiar images in the world.