Barclays wants your sympathy. Of the £12bn of capital raised in the past year, domestic investors provided just £3bn. But after rashly spurning the offer of a government-underwritten rights issue, the bank struggled to find cheaper private capital and in its haste to secure £7bn trampled over sacrosanct pre-emption rights. It has offshored about a third of its equity, issuing £3bn of debt instruments – similar to preference shares – and £2.8bn of convertible notes to Qatar and Abu Dhabi investors, but offered only £1.5bn of convertibles to existing shareholders. Institutional investors, who wanted a slice of the 14 per cent coupon on the debt instruments, felt peeved.

Will the bank’s latest concessions – offering ordinary shareholders £500m of debt securities, forsaking executive directors’ bonuses and putting the whole board up for re-election – be enough to avert a rebellion at next week’s vote? To judge from the frosty response of the Association of British Insurers, investor approval cannot be taken for granted. Tossing some debt to institutions may smooth hackles, but existing shareholders still miss out on the return-enhancing warrants offered as a sweetener to the Gulf investors. That smacks of two-tier shareholder treatment.