Philip Isherwood, a strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, points out that the de-leveraging story was anyway a mixed one in America, where many companies merely amassed cash and left gross borrowing intact, while others in troubled sectors did not even do that.
While these market sectors captured the majority of startup action, other fields lost their allure as too many entrepreneurs jumped into the same space at the same time without a competitive edge.