Marcus Agius, the smooth-talking Barclays chairman, had to draw on all the diplomatic guile he learnt as an investment banker with Lazard yesterday as he contended with a seemingly unending list of investor gripes about the bank's capital raising.

The white-haired 62-year-old banker spent most of the emergency shareholders' meeting on his feet taking questions. Only rarely did he pass the baton to John Varley, his chief executive, or Sir Richard Broadbent, head of the bank's remuneration committee.

Mr Agius is preparing to enter his third year as chairman of the Bank, having joined the board at the end of 2006 after a 33-year career at Lazard. While he was at Lazard, cultivating connections in some of Britain's top company boardrooms, Mr Agius witnessed the conversion of the bank from a blue-blooded advisory club owned by its partners into a thoroughly modern company listed in America. After a period of intense infighting, Lazard successfully secured a listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2005.

Mr Agius cultivates a reputation as a man who has changed little during his lengthy career, noting that before he joined Barclays he had remained in the same house, married to the same woman and with the same job since 1972. However, his unexpected arrival as chairman of Barclays caused a flurry of interest. It was seen as particularly noteworthy because Mr Agius, in his former corporate role as the non-executive chairman of BAA, was pivotal in persuading Ferrovial, the Spanish support services giant, to pay a top-of-the-market £10 billion for Britain's busiest airports.

That enhanced Mr Agius's reputation as a smooth and effective negotiator. Although it must have been a wrench leaving Lazard, Mr Agius's decision to accept the Barclays job was said to have been instantaneous.