Every unhappy deal is unhappy in its own way, to paraphrase Tolstoy. So it is with the Clear Channel bust-up. One novelty is that the banks that are financing the deal are right at the centre of the complaint.

The buyers – we have yet to hear the banks’ side – basically claim the banks wanted to derail the deal. The sponsors say the banks want to avoid the estimated $2.6bn mark-to-market loss on the buy-out debt. Once fees are netted off, this would average more than $300m per bank. That alone may not reflect the total economic cost to the banks. There are balance sheet implications of holding this much debt: it ties up precious capital and exposes the banks to a very concentrated credit risk. Still, one might have assumed, until now the banks and financial sponsors would have found some way of working things out rather than resort to legal warfare.