“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it,” says Malcolm about the Thane of Cawdor in Macbeth. The epitaph could be applied to thousands of hedge funds that are, like Cawdor, facing execution.

The hedge fund industry, which enjoyed rapid growth in the first years of the century, is imploding. It took time for the financial crisis that started in banks and investment banks to work its way through to hedge funds. But they are now suffering on an epic scale.