How are the mighty fallen. This time last year, as global financial markets were just beginning to feel the pinch from record late payments and rising defaults on risky US home loans, more than 2,000 anxious mortgage bankers and investors gathered in New York in search of strategies to weather the storm.

The keynote speakers were two titans of the mortgage industry and the securitisation business that bundled those loans into saleable investments: Angelo Mozilo, chief executive of Countrywide Financial, and Alan "Ace" Greenberg, executive committee chairman at Bear Stearns.