Champagne flowed on Thursday night at the new Westfield shopping centre in west London. Amid the crowds at the House of Fraser store were two men with something to prove.

In Reykjavik three weeks ago Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson, chairman of the Baugur retail empire, and Gunnar Sigurdsson, chief executive, looked washed up by the Icelandic financial crisis. The government had ended up owning Baugur’s debt when it seized Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir, the failed Icelandic banks.