So much for the long-term investors. The Middle Eastern moneymen who piled into Barclays in the darkest days of the banking crisis have moved smartly to take their cash off the table. When the UK bank tapped Gulf investors last year, trampling on shareholders’ pre-emption rights in its haste to avoid a government bail-out, it justified the breach of corporate governance protocol by saying it would gain access to valuable “strategic and commercial relationships”.

Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who heads up the Abu Dhabi-based International Petroleum Investment Company, was first out the door, selling a near 12 per cent stake in June for a £1.5bn profit.