Mark Clare, chief executive of the beleaguered housebuilder Barratt Developments, may find little solace in his latest iPod download.

The 50-year-old is listening to American band Ben Folds Five, whose big hit song is the aptly named Brick, containing the chorus: “She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly; Off the coast and I'm headed nowhere; She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly.”

When Mr Clare took the job 19 months ago, he rode the company's soaring share price as Barratt broke through the £11 mark.

By February 2007 Barratt edged up to £13 a share, valuing the group at nearly £4.5 billion, as he announced the £2.2 billion cash acquisition of Wilson Bowden.

For a few months Mr Clare, the former British Gas managing director who had never laid a brick in his life, was Britain's biggest builder.

By the time that the Wilson Bowden acquisition was completed, there were signs that the housing boom was coming off the boil.

Barratt's share price slipped below £11 and until this April this year it was in steady decline in line with the sector.

Over the past few days Mr Clare, 50, has watched Barratt's share price suffer the most of any of the big housebuilders since the housing crash of the early 1990s.

The company's market value yesterday briefly fell to £186 million as the share price tumbled 42 per cent before Mr Clare finally, after days of short-selling on the stock, put out a statement to the Stock Exchange in an attempt to reassure.

The Wilson Bowden deal has left Barratt grappling with just over £1.7 billion of debt as sales dry up in the face of the worst mortgage drought for a generation.

Now Mr Clare must talk with his own group's lenders - HSBC, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB. Analysts believe that a debt-for-equity swap is on the cards to avoid refinancing at punitive rates or a call for a rights issue that would be difficult to pull off, given the recent plunge in the share price.

Mr Clare insists that he continues to talk to his existing institutional shareholders and that they “continue to be supportive”. Whether that support remains if he is forced to significantly dilute their holdings remains to be seen.

Mr Clare skipped university after grammar school to train as an accountant. An early career at GEC Marconi was followed by a spell in telecom systems at Nortel, all of which preceded his 12 years with British Gas.

Mr Clare is married with three children. He lives in Hertfordshire and has a bolthole in Spain.