Let’s take a step back and respect history for a second. AIG, a $200bn insurance behemoth was started after the first world war by scrappy and persistent Cornelius Vander Starr as he went from boat to boat, selling insurance at the port of Shanghai with $1,000 in his pocket.

Lehman Brothers was started 158 years ago by three cotton sellers from Montgomery, Alabama, who, like so many others after them, decided to get into the trading game and began trading their cotton.