Few embodied the conflicting goals of German privatisation – securing revenues for the state while fostering competition among companies – more than Manfred Overhaus, a civil service mandarin, who oversaw the budgets of governments on both right and left from 1993 until last year.

Faced with shrinking government finances, he was instrumental in privatising Deutsche Telekom and Deutsche Post in the 1990s – a project ostensibly dedicated to European Union principles of free markets and competition.