Within two minutes of the conclusion of an "open" and "non-wall crossed" conversation with Punch Taverns' management and broker Bank of America Merrill Lynch in June 2009, David Einhorn gave orders to sell the hedge fund's entire stake. Two and a half years on, that decision has caught up with him.

Einhorn and his hedge fund, Greenlight Capital, were yesterday fined £7.2m by the UK's Financial Services Authority for engaging in market abuse which, while "not deliberate or reckless," represented a "serious failure to act in accordance with the standards reasonably expected of market participants".