Barclays is not offering its 700,000 private shareholders the opportunity to participate in its £7bn capital raising – though given investors’ recent losses in banks some question how many would want to stump up the cash.

Barclays said it was “not appropriate” to open the capital raising to private shareholders. As well as its desire to secure the additional capital as quickly as possible, the bank noted that the “reserve capital instruments” yielding 14 per cent are deemed “sophisticated financial instruments” under Financial Services Authority regulations.