It’s not every day that you receive a news alert about the person with whom you are about to sit down for dinner. But guests arrived for the Financial News investment banking dinner last Monday to be informed by their BlackBerries that David Mayhew had stepped down as chairman of JP Morgan Cazenove after 50 years in the City, 42 of them at Caz.

The impromptu and heartfelt standing ovation that Mayhew received later in the evening was a clear illustration of the esteem in which he is held by his peers.