David Benson 's recollection of the weekend before the collapse Lehman Brothers in September 2008 isn't totally clear. But one thing he remembers is that, as the then chief operating officer of Man Global Strategies, he spent the week leading up to the investment bank's implosion getting as many funds off the Lehman platform as fast as he could.

"We had a lot of hedge funds that were on the Lehman platform and it was pretty clear there was a risk that Lehman would go under and we were encouraging them aggressively to leave the Lehman platform, which they really liked," says Benson. "Thankfully we did get most of them off the platform before the collapse."