Sir Simon Robey certainly knows how to do a deal. Some seasoned City watchers have been astonished by the price that he and partner Simon Warshaw have extracted from Evercore to buy their firm Robey Warshaw.

The pair have been looking to sell the business for a while and some observers had assumed that in the end they would accept a modest sum in return for giving their baby a safe home. A payout of $196m is hardly a modest sum for a firm with just five partners and 18 employees.