Jabre Capital Partners have asked us to point out that they helped support HBOS by acting as a sub-underwriter on its rights issue. Jabre hedged itself against losses by taking a short position.

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Marshall Wace, Moore Capital, Jabre Capital Partners and Harbinger Capital prefer to work with the minimum of publicity, but have moved centre stage in a growing controversy surrounding the speculators who have made millions from the British banking crisis.

These secretive hedge funds are among at least nine firms known to have taken big bets that shares would fall when HBOS was trying to raise £4 billion from investors two months ago.

The precipitous share slide, in part after it was targeted by speculators, was crucial in the bank’s decision to seek comfort in a takeover by Lloyds TSB yesterday.

Harbinger placed the largest bets - a process known in financial circles as “going short” - that HBOS shares would fall. Under rules imposed by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the City regulator, it disclosed in late June that it had sold shares worth 3.29 per cent of the entire market value of the bank - a bet worth hundreds of millions of pounds. It is not known whether it continued to short the bank or closed out its position. Harbinger declined to comment.

The attack on HBOS’s share price earlier this summer caused a storm of resentment in parts of the City. An unfounded rumour that the bank was facing serious financial difficulty - thought to have been planted by a hedge fund - triggered an FSA investigation.

Tracking down the source of scurrilous rumours is notoriously difficult and the FSA conceded last month that it had failed to identify the culprit.

David Rule, the chief executive of the International Securities Lending Association, said that short-sellers were being made the scapegoat for wider market malaise and reflected sentiment among other HBOS investors. “To say that short-selling is the root cause of HBOS’s demise is ridiculous. The real cause was the bond and money markets. HBOS was substantially reliant on wholesale markets; it was downgraded and the equity price fell in response,” he said.

The Alternative Investment Management Association, which represents hedge funds, also condemned the idea of a ban on short-selling, arguing that the practice made markets more efficient. Florence Lombard, its chief executive, said: “Short-selling is not the real cause of the decline in HBOS’s share value, nor are hedge funds to blame for wider, exceptional market volatility. The true cause appears to be a widespread lack of confidence by all investors.”

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