Like nature’s most efficient predators, they are a secretive breed, disguised in pin-striped anonymity, going in for the kill only in the darkened corners of the City’s concrete jungle. But the scent of financial turmoil was so great yesterday that they broke cover and in broad daylight openly sought their prey in London’s new financial centre, Canary Wharf, In the current climate, no one in the banking business feels safe – and with huge mortgages to service, school fees to pay and exotic holidays already booked, there was no shortage of big beasts seeking pastures new. Enter the headhunters, their sights trained on a growing number of willing targets.

Will Invine, of Tardis Group, was one. “You need to be reactionary in headhunting,” he said. “If something on the scale of Lehman Brothers happens, you pick up the phone immediately. There’s no point hanging around – these guys are pretty receptive to offers at the moment.”

Malcolm Wood, of Hamilton Chase, said that senior traders from the bank were ringing urgently to request a job that paid at least £150,000.

One would-be target leaning against a rail was an employee of HSBC on a short lunch-break. “Your job could go at any time,” he said. “When you e-mail someone asking them for something they get back to you straight away. You feel desperate to be seen pulling your weight.”

In the marbled shopping centre beneath No 1 Canada Square, better known as the Canary Wharf tower, an employee of Barclays was doubly worried. “My wife works in banking too,” he said. “That’s the most scary thing. She’s worrying about her job, I’m worrying about my job . . .”

Their son is to attend school next year. “We had planned to put him in a private school. We had planned to go on holiday at Christmas. We may have to change our plans,” he said. At least he was not in the same position as his friend at Lehman Brothers, in Britain on a work permit, who fears that he will have to uproot his young family and return to India.

“I used to dream of working for Lehman Brothers,” he said. “Last year I got an offer from them, and one from Barclays. The Barclays job was a higher profile role so I took it. I now think I made the right choice. But if Lehman Brothers can collapse in five days, then no one in the world is safe.”

A private contractor emerged from Morgan Stanley, one of the two surviving Wall Street investment banks, to report that employees inside were “happyish”. He said: “They had all had an e-mail from their boss saying, ‘Don’t worry, we should be all right’, or words to that effect.”

Beside the Reuters building, whose screen displayed headlines of gathering doom, a 30-year-old currency trader said he had spent much of the morning looking at other jobs. “The market has stopped,” he said, staring across to the headhunters pressing the flesh. “It’s a strange and sombre time.”

A senior vice-president at one bank said he had lost a quarter of a million pounds in bonuses. “My wife is being pretty stoical about the whole thing,” he said, before leaving for an interview at another investment bank.

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