One top-ranking Morgan Stanley executive, though, said he 'does not stand a chance of getting his job back.' Jennings may also face a civil suit for damages from the taxi driver.

Mr Ammar's attorney, Hassan Ahmad, says no settlement discussions are taking place, but his client is talking about such a suit.

'Our client wants justice,' Mr Ahmad said. 'He wants Mr Jennings to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.' A pre-trial hearing is set for April 12.

There are some parallels between this story and Tom Wolfe's 1987 fictional bestseller, The Bonfire of the Vanities, in which bond trader Sherman McCoy and his mistress hit a Bronx high schooler with his Mercedes, then flee the scene. He is eventually tracked down and arrested after a campaign by a newspaper.

At first glance, Jennings seems an incarnation of Wolfe's 'Master of the Universe' stereotype.

He is in the bond business. His two children attend one of the best private schools around. His home is a set piece for the good life, with sisal carpets, marble floors and state-of-the-art appliances. The backyard boasts a children's paradise of playthings as well as a fire pit and posh entertainment centre.

Mr Ammar and his family, in contrast, live in a ground-floor apartment in Astoria, Queens, in the shadow of the Triborough Bridge, a home where Amtrak Acela trains rumble constantly overhead.

The most striking thing about their yard is the mass of thick black cables snaking out the windows to satellite dishes on the roof. Rust bleeds from the lime-green vinyl siding. The communal garbage cans are penned within a rusty, two-foot fence beneath his living room window.

But while Wall Street's Masters of the Universe certainly still do exist, Jennings apparently wasn't one of them, according to several colleagues. And though at first Ammar was something of a tabloid celebrity, garnering publicity like supporters of Wolfe's hit-and-run character, he's no longer talking to the press. It's hardly the media-fuelled firestorm that erupts in Wolfe's novel.