Laughter. You could hear it above the noise of traffic in Manhattan last month. Goldman Sachs had sweated bullets to deliver its first ever investor day. Rival bankers were tickled, not terrified. “Is that all they’ve got?” chuckled one.

The pitch, led by chief executive David Solomon, was as slick as any Apple product launch. But the modesty of ambition — for group earnings to exceed capital costs by a few percentage points — signalled how badly the bank’s fortunes have waned.

Financial Times