The Barclays shareholder revolt appeared to be fizzling out last night after Gulf investors putting £6 billion into the bank refused to countenance any watering-down of the terms.

Investors led by Legal & General and Aviva have been putting pressure on Barclays to rejig the terms to give them and other shareholders more of a chance to participate.

But the favoured Gulf investors – Qatar Holding, Challenger Universal and Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed al-Nahyan – have made it plain to Barclays that they will not accept any rewriting of the deal. “We entered into an agreement and we expect both sides to stick to it,” a source close to one Gulf investor said yesterday.

In private briefings, Barclays told some traditional shareholders yesterday that there was no scope for any reworking of the deal. On Wednesday, by contrast, the bank was still hoping that the Gulf investors might be persuaded to stomach some concessions.

One mainstream investor told The Times that he was extremely irritated, but there was not much he could do. Voting down the deal would be “shooting ourselves in the foot”, he said. Investors are considering abstaining to register a protest.

Traditional investors are expected to register their extreme annoyance with Barclays again today at a meeting held by the Association of British Insurers. But few seem prepared to vote against the capital-raising. A veto would force Barclays to return to the Government for capital on unfavourable terms. The Treasury has made clear that if that happened, the terms offered last month would no longer be available.

Barclays is understood to have explored asking the Gulf investors to allow their rights to £3 billion of Reserve Capital Instruments, high-quality capital paying an interest rate of 14 per cent, to be offered first to its existing shareholders. They refused.

Shareholders are furious because Barclays in October at first promised to honour preemption rights, only to change its mind a few weeks later because of the speed and certainty of the Gulf deal in difficult markets.

RREV, a voting advice service used by many pension funds, advised investors to abstain on the deal. The vote takes place on November 24. Existing shareholders were at a disadvantage because of the high cost of the capital-raising and its dilutive nature, it said. However, it would not be in shareholders’ best interests to reject the deal outright because of the high level of market uncertainty and the £300 million of break fees that would have to be paid to the Gulf investors.

Barclays shares hit a 12-year low of 157.7p yesterday.

— Royal Bank of Scotland had no comment last night on a report that 3,000 staff are to be cut from its global banking and markets division workforce. RBS has already made plain that the 20,000-strong division will be shrunk.

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