When “times are tough, you’ve really got to trim the fat in your business, and our software will help you do that”. So said Larry Ellison, chief executive of Oracle, seven years ago – just weeks before a collapse in orders forced him to issue a profit warning, signalling the beginning of a severe tech recession.

Similar bravado has been in evidence this week, even as Wall Street took fright at a cautious forecast from Intel and braced for the fall-out from an economic slowdown in the US, the technology sector’s biggest market.