Last month the UK's third biggest bank raised funds from major investors in Qatar, Japan, China and Singapore, but said it wanted to give existing shareholders the chance to buy on the same terms.

The deal allowed investors to buy shares at 282p each, a 9 per cent discount at the time of the offer.

Last night Barclays said shareholders signed up to buy 267 million new shares, or 19 per cent of those offered, which analysts said was within expectations after the shares dipped below 282p in the days before the deadline, reducing the incentive to buy.

The remaining 1.14 billion shares will be taken by the previously announced anchor invest-ors rather than leave the market to soak up unwanted stock.

Banking shares rallied late in the day yesterday on the news that US bank Citigroup had made a smaller-than-expected loss.

But the news came too late for Halifax Bank of Scotland, whose underwriters are set to be left with the bulk of a £4bn rights issue.

At 11am yesterday morning – the deadline for shareholders to take up their rights – HBOS shares were trading at 269p, some 6p below the 275p rights price.

The shares closed the day up 5 per cent, a rise of 13.75p to 282p following the better than expected news from Citigroup, but it came too late in the day.

HBOS's two underwriting banks, Morgan Stanley and Dresdner, could now be left with as much as three-quarters of the shares, if analyst estimates of a take-up around 20 per cent to a third prove accurate.

The two banks are expected to have found sub-underwriters to take on roughly half the rump and to have hedged their remaining exposure with positions elsewhere in the UK banking sector.

HBOS is expected to detail the take-up of its rights issue on Monday.

Last night analysts praised Barclays' fund raising scheme at a time when HBOS and Bradford & Bingley have received a poor reception for their rights issues.

Mamoun Tazi, analyst at MF Global, said: "Barclays gave the opportunity to existing shareholders and filled the void with new investors. It was a very well structured and intelligent way of raising capital, it avoided the pitfalls that have been associated with rights issues."

The structure also allowed Barclays to raise funds quicker than rivals such as HBOS, which unveiled its cashcall two months before Barclays but only closed the offer on Friday.

Banks across the world have been trying to raise money to boost their balance sheets which have been hit by writedowns on risky assets due to the lockdown in credit markets.

Qatar's sovereign wealth fund paid £1.4bn for a 6.2 per cent stake in Barclays and a member of Qatar's ruling family spent £432m on a 1.9 per cent stake.

Other investors to back the offer were state-owned China Development Bank , Singapore's Temasek and Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui.

Overseas investors will now own over 40 per cent of Barclays' shares, up from about a third before the cashcall. Some of the investors have faced criticism for the investments, but analysts said capital shortages have given them rare opportunities to buy bank stakes as regulators become more relaxed about such cross-border investments.

Barclays has been under pressure to increase its capital reserves after suffering a £2.64bn hit from the crisis in credit markets and the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market.