The brash business style of Sir Alan Sugar is a long way from the City of London’s cosy heritage of corporate broking – traditionally the domain of upper-class gents whose toughest challenge of the working day might once have been choosing the right Bordeaux to oil the relationship between a company and its investors.

But the pleasures of wining, dining and lunching are giving way to some serious hard work, with Drax, the energy group, making the contenders for the latest corporate broking mandate, fight it out in an Apprentice-style challenge more familiar from reality TV.