Toxic derivatives, excessive executive pay, extortionate Wall Street fees - all targets for scorn in Warren Buffett's annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, published on Saturday. This year, the legendary investor added a new group to the list of "Helpers" he says eat up as much as 20 per cent of the earnings of US business: "hyper-Helpers" bearing "sewn-on sexy names like hedge fund or private equity".

Mr Buffett showed their impact through the parable of an imaginary Gotrocks family that owns all the companies in America. Their hyper-Helpers offer a "breathtakingly simple solution" to individual family members: pay us more to outmanoeuvre your relatives. They siphon off a growing share of the earnings, leaving the whole family - renamed the Hadrocks - worse off.