Some days ago I spoke at the annual conference for the Institute for Turnaround. The title for the event was “Turnaround! It’s a perfect storm”. It was a well-timed affair.

The Institute for Turnaround is the UK’s trade body for company doctors, those mostly low-profile figures who try to salvage insolvent companies. I liken them to corporate firefighters: metaphorically they walk into burning companies, seeing if they can find anything to retrieve from the flames and ashes. And in this perilous climate, these unsentimental yet almost heroic figures are frenetically busy.