Animal trophies cover the walls of the Dallas headquarters of Highland Capital Management, according to people who have been there. Some, it is said, came from beasts bagged on safari in Africa by Jim Dondero, who founded the firm with Mark Okada in 1993 – while others were shot from Mr Dondero’s back porch in Texas.

The symbolism is fitting. When the global financial turmoil began last year, Highland was one of the more feared big-game hunters in the credit markets. It was a leader of a new breed of alternative hedge funds that invested in high-yield loans to junk-rated corporate borrowers and helped fuel a leveraged buy-out boom in the process.