Rainmakers have lost all their swagger. The bold strategists who engineered the transforming deals that changed the corporate landscape have been replaced by executors with little more than balance sheets. Identifying an M&A banker with a real cache has become more difficult.

Today, it’s all about market share. Just look at the line-up on the €2.6bn (£2.4bn) sale of Orangina Schweppes to its Japanese rival Suntory. Blackstone and Lion Capital used six banks to find the buyer – even though a junior consumer analyst could have worked out the very short list of likely acquirers.