It is a shame that investment bankers at Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank probably never perused Jon Huntsman’s Winners Never Cheat: Even in Difficult Times. It would have been a more profitable read than a stack of business bestsellers, giving them a measure of the man. On Tuesday, the two banks settled with Huntsman Corp, the chemicals firm he founded, for $632m in cash and a favourable $1.1bn loan. Unlike dozens of deals that were either renegotiated or axed as the buy-out boom imploded, Huntsman did not let its acquirer or the banks that promised to finance it off lightly.

Huntsman first went after private equity firm Apollo Management, which agreed to buy Huntsman for $6.5bn or $28 a share in 2007 through its Hexion Specialty Chemicals unit, trumping a lower bid. Apollo was aided by its financiers in a legal argument that a “material adverse change” had voided the deal’s terms.