You might view Philip Milne as one of the many casualties of the current financial crunch, another top exec who lost his job because of his company’s disastrous investments in subprime mortgages.

For the Mays family, recent months have conjured Dickens’s Great Expectations.

The proposed $19 billion acquisition of Clear Channel, the broadcasting company founded by L. Lowry Mays, was announced more than a year ago. The buyers, Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners, delayed seeking approval from the Justice Department until they had cleared review with the Federal Communications Commission.