Bob Diamond, the Barclays president, could pocket as much as £4.7 million after the bank agreed the sale of its iShares asset management unit to CVC Partners, the private equity firm, for $4.4 billion (£3 billion).

Shares in Barclays rose 12.5 per cent as investors welcomed the deal, which will increase the bank’s capital base after it refused any help from the Government.

Barclays said that the sale of iShares would increase its tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of its financial strength, by 0.54 percentage points, to 7.2 per cent.

Barclays, which last year raised £7 billion from a consortium of Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, said in February that it had sufficient capital to see it through the recession, while the bank’s balance sheet passed a stress test by the Financial Services Authority last month.

However, some analysts say that its tier 1 capital ratio is significantly behind its main competitors and predict that it could look to raise more money in coming months.

Lloyds estimates that its tier 1 capital ratio is 14.5 per cent, while RBS has put its figure at 12.4 per cent. The Government is now the majority shareholder in RBS and Lloyds after injecting them with billions of pounds and guaranteeing their most toxic assets.

In a sign of just how keen Barclays was to sell iShares, it agreed to lend CVC $3.1 billion of the transaction price. Analysts also said that the bank’s willingness to sell such a fast-growing and profitable unit indicated its eagerness to secure a deal.

The iShares business is the world’s largest manager of exchange-traded funds, managing about 360 world-wide. It had £226 billion worth of assets under management on December 31 and made a pretax profit of £288 million in 2008.

Barclays has reserved the the right to solicit higher offers from rival bidders over the next 45 days through a so-called go-shop clause. In the event of a successful higher bid emerging from a rival, CVC would receive a break fee of $175 million from that bidder. Barclays will book a $2.2 billion profit on the sale of iShares, which sat in its Barclays Global Investors asset management unit. That unit is headed by Mr Diamond, who will share millions of pounds of windfalls with about 200 colleagues in the division.

Other firms that had expressed an interest in buying iShares included Colony Capital and Bain Capital, the US private equity firms, Goldman Sachs and Apax Partners.

John Varley, Barclays’ chief executive, said: “This transaction realises significant value for Barclays. IShares has experienced rapid growth over the past several years and has reached a point where it can develop further on a standalone basis.”

Barclays shares jumped by 19.7p, or 12.48 per cent, to 177½p.

— Eric Daniels, the chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, has been handed a bonus shares package worth £2.2 million at today’s prices. The bank unveiled yesterday, that Mr Daniels could be awarded 2.9 million of shares in three years if he meets targets. A spokesman for the bank said that the shares would be awarded only if Mr Daniels met “very stretching performance targets”.

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