“The associates here work far harder than ever I used to,” confessed one City partner in a rare moment of candour as The Diary mucked in with research for this week’s bumper US Firms In London feature. “We did manage to send one or two of them on holiday this summer, however, which was nice.”

Other US partners were in unusually reticent mood, however, with several influential figures uncharacteristically reluctant to provide the usual booming Yankee rhetoric on anything and everything.