A COMPANY controlled by Amanda Staveley, the former girlfriend of Prince Andrew, will earn a £40m commission for brokering last week’s capital injection into Barclays by Middle East investors.

Staveley’s PCP Capital Partners, a boutique advisory firm, acted for Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family. He is investing £3.5 billion and will control 16% of the bank.

For Staveley, 35, it marks the second big deal she has brokered in recent weeks. She also masterminded the takeover of Manchester City football club by the same sheikh. Her firm is thought to have banked £10m in commission for that deal.

PCP’s total commission will be £110m, but after paying other advisers it will make a £40m profit on the Barclays deal.

Staveley has put years into building the trust of Middle Eastern investors. It dates back to when she ran a restaurant in Newmarket and earned the respect of high-rolling racehorse owners, many of whom came from the Gulf states.

PCP is not the only adviser to have benefited from commissions. The other main investor, the Qatar Investment Authority, received a payment of some £120m, much of which will be shared among QIA officials. Barclays’ total fees will be £300m.

The scale of the payouts by Barclays is expected to further ignite tension with its investors since the terms of the £7 billion capital raising was announced on Friday.

Yesterday John Varley, Barclays’ chief executive, defended the fundrasing, which will leave the company 31% owned by Middle Eastern investors.

He said: “In markets as volatile and as unpredictable as this there are significant risks in being at the back of the queue in raising capital and we had the opportunity of raising it. It was in the interests of the group and the shareholders to do it quickly and in size.”

Varley also countered criticism that the bank had rejected financial help from the government in favour of a private solution to avoid scrutiny of big bonuses.

Varley said he would waive his bonus for this year. Even though the group’s profits have grown, he believes it is not right to accept a bonus when there has been such big a fall in the share price.

Last year he took home a £1.42m bonus in addition to his salary of £975,000. It is not clear whether other board members will follow his example.

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