It was a Sunday, and Dave Meintjes was at home in Cape Town watching Ernie Els as he strode confidently into the lead of the Open Championship with some brilliant play. As it turned out, the Big Easy`s victory bid nearly unravelled, but golf quickly became the least of Meintjes`s concerns. That Sunday he got a call at home.

“We`d done a scenario analysis,” says Meintjes, “and this sort of thing was always one of the possibilities. One merely has to look at the other companies in the sector, and the debt WorldCom carried.”