Over four centuries ago, Francis Drake wrote: "If people could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us!" On Monday, Financial News will profile a group of financiers, each with more than 30 years in the industry, whose expertise and experience allows them a rare perspective on the financial crisis.

As the financial services industry surveys the damage caused by the credit crunch, bankers, politicians and pundits alike are casting around for precedents - the IMF bailout of the UK in the 1970s, the unemployment and strikes of the 1980s or the Black Monday crash of the same decade - for an idea of how bad things could get.