Advisers to Barclays are exploring the idea of the bank offering a partial cash alternative in its bid for ABN Amro, bank-rolled by €12 billion (£8 billion) of the proceeds of the controversial LaSalle side-deal, The Times has learnt.

The Barclays camp, which is trying to outmanoeuvre a higher €72 billion offer for the Dutch bank from a consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland, is exploring ways of sweetening its €65 billion offer without cost to its own shareholders.

Currently the combined Barclays/ABN Amro plans to use €12 billion of the proceeds of the $21 billion (£10.6 billion) sale of ABN’s LaSalle to Bank of America for share buybacks.

However, an alternative option being floated would be to use some of the proceeds to offer a cash sweetener to ABN shareholders. Currently they are being offered purely Barclays paper.

Another option thought to be under consideration would be to increase the leverage of the deal and so release cash.

However, any sweetening of the bid terms could be self-defeating because it could lead to a fall in the Barclays share price.

Fortis, one of the rival RBS consortium members, yesterday broke ranks with its partners and said it would not raise its offer for the Dutch bank.

Fortis’s chief executive, Jean-Paul Votron, told a French newspaper that it would be difficult for Barclays to beat the consortium’s offer because of its 79 per cent cash component. “As far as Fortis is concerned, we believe that this price represents a good price and reflects the value of ABN Amro’s assets,” he said. “Fortis will not make a higher bid.”

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