Mr Parsons is likely to be named shortly as chairman of Citigroup, which has taken two injections of US government money without altering its downward trajectory. It is expected to sustain a $10bn (€7.5bn, ￡6.8bn) fourth-quarter loss in addition to the $18bn it suffered in the previous four.

In some ways, Mr Parsons is ideally suited to take over at Citigroup. After all, his previous job at Time Warner was to untangle an ill-conceived and poorly-executed merger that left a giant company adrift.

Yet the stakes at Time Warner, which had a paltry $22bn in debt, were comparatively low. Shareholders were angry at being taken for an expensive ride by America Online and Steve Case, its chairman, in the 2000 merger. For the rest of us, the fiasco was as entertaining as one of Warner Brothers' better films.