BARCLAYS may not have quite matched Royal Bank of Scotland’s vast losses but it has a different reason to be wary. It is facing an increasingly determined adversary in Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Thani, half brother of the Qatari emir, who had €50m (£39m) allegedly stolen from his Barclays accounts in Spain by a wayward butler.

The billionaire sheikh has hired Kroll, the firm of sleuths, as he sues Barclays for gross negligence — he claims the bank never contacted him about the huge sums being moved from his account.

The sheikh is asking the Spanish courts to order Barclays to pay €20m “security” against his legal action.

Barclays, however, says it is good for the money and no security is needed. The sheikh is not convinced. In his mind, banks aren’t what they used to be and he wants to see the colour of its money.

Meanwhile, the court has told butler Gerald Gouallier that he needs to increase his bail to €300,000 or face immediate incarceration.

Oh my, the sheikh is not one to be messed with.

Kiwis sail off to challenge Icap chief

MICHAEL SPENCER of Icap had better watch out. Maximus, a 100 ft racing yacht (sadly, not Russell Crowe in a skirt and sandals), is coming after his ocean racer Icap Leopard.

Landlubbers, let me explain. The $5m (£2.6m) Maximus has been moored in Auckland since its keel was damaged in December. Now the boat has been repaired and Kiwi racer Ross Field

is gearing up for a showdown after Leopard, skippered by Mike Slade, snatched his record in the Rolex Fastnet Race last year.

Along with Field, Maximus will be crewed by Eddie Charlton, director of HSBC private banking, and members of the New Zealand America’s Cup team. So far so good.

There is one minor hiccup — Maximus needs to raise more cash to fund its challenge. The team has been talking to potential sponsors in Abu Dhabi and China.

Surely they could manage to find someone in London or continental Europe. A rival to Icap, perhaps? Now that would be fun.

Bankers fight for £1 a night hotel rooms

HAVE you noticed how this credit crunch is leading people to act out of character?

Take City bankers. Not so long ago they embodied conspicuous consumption. Today they are going to considerable lengths to grab the best deals, such as the £1 hotel room in London’s Hoxton Hotel, which was founded by Pret A Manger’s Sinclair Beecham.

Every three months the hotel releases 500 rooms at a rate of £1 each and it’s the boys and girls from Goldman, Deutsche et al who are snapping up these bargains. Last time, all 500 sold out in less than 20 minutes.

Bagging one of these rooms has become a real badge of hon-our among the City’s finest, conferring considerable bragging rights on the victorious raiders.

Maybe they are not acting so out of character after all.

- A ROUND of golf in Surrey may never be the same again. Jurassic Encounter — an “adventure” 18-hole golf course — opens this week and pitches itself somewhere between the crazy and more sedate versions of the game. Players pitch and putt round waterfalls, “primeval” caves and nine roaming mechanical dinosaurs. One of the beasts almost didn’t make it. A 9 ft T-Rex was buried alive after last week’s wet weather caused a mud pit to form where turf had not yet been laid. Luckily, the landscapers managed to dig him out.

- NOW who could resist the opportunity to invest in a firm chaired by Railtrack wrecker Stephen Byers MP? Quite a few of you, it seems. Earlier this summer, the gaffe-prone Blairite whose name can still make many a small shareholder shudder, was made chairman of the rather pretentiously named Ritz Offset Climate, an outfit that wants to help construction firms go green.

Byers proudly listed his new directorship in the register for MPs’ interests, but only 10 days later something odd happened — he quit.

“We didn’t get the funding we thought we would,” said one person close to Ritz. “I think it’s fair to say our budding investors weren’t exactly convinced by the calibre of our management.”

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