Take a long, hard look at how the performance of investment banks last year compared with before the financial crisis kicked off five years ago and the minus sign will appear with monotonous regularity. But there is no doubt that the biggest declines have been felt by European rather than US firms.

Markets revenues across a sample of the five largest US investment banks and their five largest European rivals are down on both sides of the Atlantic. But they are down by nine percentage points more among the Europeans than the Americans.