When Klaus Zumwinkel, then chief executive of Deutsche Post, one of Germany’s largest companies, was arrested on charges of tax evasion a year ago, the public reaction against the business world was swift.

Franz Fehrenbach, chief executive of Bosch, the €40bn ($54bn, £36bn) German industrial group, told the Financial Times a few months later that business had become a bogeyman. “When we as managers let ourselves be described as asocial [as one politician had called them], there is an issue,” he said.