Seventeen years ago, Warren Buffett put the phone down to the US Treasury and strode into a press conference to introduce himself to 100 reporters and photographers as the new chairman of Salomon Brothers.

Buffett had just won a life-saving reprieve from Nicholas Brady, the Treasury Secretary, who reversed a trading ban on Salomon Brothers after it was caught manipulating US government bond auctions.

So began the Sage of Omaha’s last foray into investment banking.

While Mr Buffett was able to take a profit from his Salomon stake when Sandy Weill’s Traveler Group bought it in 1997, before it was folded into Citigroup, the bank took him on a rollercoaster ride that he may not be eager to repeat.

Mr Buffett bought a 12 per cent stake in Salomon Brothers in 1987 to ward off a hostile takeover but was thrust into the limelight in August 1991 as the bank teetered on the brink of collapse after the US Treasury bond scandal.

“I don’t know how long it will take to get this job done. My job is to clean up the sins of the past”, Mr Buffett told the press conference that day.

Mr Buffett set out to change the gung-ho, high-rolling culture that had developed at Salomon through the 1980s, immortalised in Michael Lewis’s book Liar’s Poker.

Mr Buffett installed Deryck Maughan, a former British Treasury official, as chief executive, and together they steered Salomon Brothers on a steadier path and helped sell the company to Traveler Group.

But the adventure was not one that he took lightly.

In 1997, by the time the end was in sight, he joked: “I felt like the drama critic who wrote: 'I would have enjoyed the play except that I had an unfortunate seat. It faced the stage.’”

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