Royal Bank of Scotland is set to reveal that it has got its £12 billion rescue rights issue away, relieving fears that the shares would collapse if the underwriters were left with unsold stock.

It is understood that investors have taken up at least 90 per cent of their rights by the 11am deadline for offers yesterday. That would leave the underwriters with at most £1.2 billion of stock to sell in the market next week.

The final size of the take up will not be known until Monday but RBS's share price, while down 13p at 245p, was in line with falls in the bank sector and fairly healthily above the 200p discounted rights issue price.

That will be a relief to RBS's underwriters, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and UBS, which had looked likely to be left with a big rump of unsold rights to get away next week.

Traders reported several hedge funds short-selling in this expectation over the past couple of weeks but one senior trader said: “It looks like the bears have been squeezed.”

The shares have fallen 25 per cent since Sir Fred Goodwin, the RBS chief executive, announced the rights issue in mid April but in the past four days they rallied from a low of 226p.

They were also under pressure from retail investors selling their rights because they cannot afford to subscribe and from US investors who are likely to sell because they hold American Depositary Receipts under which they are not allowed to exercise their rights.

But RBS has been helped in recent days by upgrades from analysts including the well known bear Tom Rayner at Citigroup who turned positive on Thursday saying that the bank had written down most of its toxic debt. He said that even if it had to write off bad loans by 50 per cent, the effect on overall earnings would not be so great.

Fellow banks fell even harder than RBS. HBOS, the lender which is exposed to Britain's crumbling mortgage market and is about to launch its own £4billion rights issue, lost 27.25p to 330.75p.

Paul Measday, the Cazenove bank analyst, said this week: “The experience of RBS suggest HBOS's shares will remain weak through the ex-rights trading period - to the middle of next month - in anticipation of a significant rump placing.

“In our view this risk is higher for HBOS given its significant retail shareholder base.” Some 15 to 20 per cent of its shares are held by individuals compared with less than 4 per cent of RBS.

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