Oh, the buyer (Perelman) didn't suffer any. He purchased a company bung full of valuable brands, with almost unmatched worldwide recognition, and with a back library to wake the dead. And the bankers did not suffer either - had Perelman defaulted, they would have been the owners of said assets. The people who suffered were the company and its employees, who, from the moment this scoundrel became its legal owner, were squeezed like oranges to pay the debt he had loaded on the very company he'd bought. Nice fucking work if you can get it. And since this kind of sharp practice is to the advantage of, one, bankers, and, two, the kind of international adventurer whom the Tory Blur and Lord Mandelson love so intensely, and only disadvantages those who actually work and build up value and profit, you can tell that the chances of it ever being outlawed are exactly two - slim and fat.