Men love in haste, Byron’s Don Juan noted, but detest at leisure. Shareholders might long for Halifax Bank of Scotland to dump Lloyds TSB and for Barclays to ditch its high-maintenance Gulf sheikhs but worry the alternatives are worse. Institutions have no plan to reject the measly terms on which HBOS is being plundered by Lloyds. Whether they have the stomach for a real fight with Barclays’ boss John Varley at next week’s vote on his plans to raise £7bn from expensive private sources rather than the government is to be seen.

Barclays and HBOS have alienated investors by being slippery, disingenuously suggesting, for example, that the government might refuse to make public cash available if they were to return to it with their begging bowls and that any money offered would come on worse terms than those Barclays spurned in October. Thus shareholders must accept the deals on the table or risk being diluted to oblivion when the government imposes higher capital requirements on costlier terms.