Barclays is poised to drop its 317-year-old eagle logo in response to concerns from ABN Amro, its Dutch merger partner, that the design has Nazi connotations.

Sources close to the British bank said that it had come under pressure to scrap the logo. “It is rather a Teutonic looking eagle and has unfortunate connotations,” one insider said.

Barclays, which has already agreed to move its head office to Amsterdam as the price of its proposed £96 billion merger deal, is instead preparing to adopt ABN’s stylised heraldic shield worldwide.

Many in the Netherlands, which was occupied for five years during the Second World War, are deeply sensitive to Nazi imagery.

The Barclays eagle predates the Nazi era by about 230 years, dating back to 1690 when its predecessor bank set up in Lombard Street in the City of London. Over the years the image has been modified many times.

In 1999 the brand consultant Interbrand was commissioned to soften the heraldic version to make it less aggressive and it was simplified still further in 2004. An eagle – the bird of the god Odin – has featured in the German coat of arms for at least 800 years. It was modified by the Nazis and set on a swastika in 1935. An eagle remains on the federal coat of arms today.

Under the merger proposal, the combined Barclays/ABN would be called Barclays but would trade as ABN Amro in the Netherlands. Barclays is likely to retain the eagle if its bid fails.

Sources close to ABN confirmed that it had been informally agreed that the eagle would be grounded and a version of the shield adopted.

ABN has received a rival offer from a consortium of Royal Bank of Scotland, Banco Santander and Fortis. Their logos are respectively a snowflake, a flame and a hotchpotch of coloured blobs said to symbolise a village.

Lord Janner of Braunstone, chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: “I’ve been a customer of Barclays for half a century and never noticed. It has never entered my head. But the Netherlands was an occupied country and Barclays should be sensitive.”

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