Wetherell

The financial hurricanes of the past two months have pushed many of our most beloved urban species to the brink. The rapacious investment banker, the oleaginous Foxtons salesman, the ruinously expensive Russian escort: all are now on the endangered list. But none has seen their habitat battered so mercilessly as the lesser- spotted hedge-fund wife of South Kensington.

The news that the US Embassy is to depart from Mayfair, W1, in favour of Wandsworth, SW8, caused an almost audible sigh of relief to flow from the mansions of Upper Brook Street to Mount Street, home of the hip Scott's restaurant and Christian Louboutin shoe shop.

As world markets shudder, the hedge funds based in London, once the toast of the city's flashy financial elite and magnets for cosmopolitan capital, have stumbled badly. The increasingly global sweep of the credit crunch and the collapse of Lehman Brothers have punished all manner of hedge funds - secretive investment pools that rely on generous lenders and a high tolerance for risk to thrive.

Borrowers have been urged to snap up attractive mortgage deals while they last, after the sudden collapse of Lehman Brothers, the fire-sale of Merrill Lynch, the bailout of the AIG by the Federal Reserve and the prospect of an emergency takeover of the UK lender HBOS raised fears that home loans will again dry up and the cost of those available will rocket.

A chill wind is blowing through Holland Park, Kensington and Notting Hill, London's banker belt, as City job losses hit the values of prime residential properties below £5 million. They are down by 5.5 per cent over the past three months and have fallen by 9 per cent since last year.