Barclays thumbed its nose at the sceptics today, as it raised up to £7.3 billion of new capital to allow it to pass the regulators' capital demands without recourse to the Government bailout.

Instead, the bank has turned to investors in Qatar and Abu Dhabi for £5.8 billion and launched a book-building exercise to raise a further £1.5 billion from other shareholders.

The £3 billion of reserve capital instruments (RCIs) issued to Qatar and Abu Dhabi pay annual interest at 14% until June 2019.

The other £4.3 billion of mandatory convertible notes (MCNs), which will turn into Barclays ordinary shares in the first half of next year, will pay just 9.75%.

The UK Government's £37 billion of preference shares it is using to bail out Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS pays interest at 12% a year. Barclays is also paying chunky commissions to Qatar and Abu Dhabi of 2% on the RCI and 4% on the MCNs.

Keith Bowman at stockbroker Hargreaves Lansdown said: "Barclays has proved the doubters wrong again. It continues to underline management's strength in outflanking its rivals."

The bank said the new capital would raise its core equity tier one ratio, the general measure of balance-sheet strength, to 7.6%. It also confounded critics with a trading update that showed profits for the first nine months slightly ahead of a year earlier.

Chief executive John Varley said: "I'm pretty pleased we have achieved good underlying earnings growth in the current circumstances."

The statement was also welcomed by the stock market because it included credit-crunch writedowns of just £129 million after netting out gains on Barclays' own debt. Gross writedowns were £1.2 billion. Trading highlights in the past few months have been enormous growth in mortgages, where Barclays has captured 30% of the new-mortgage market, and strong growth at Barclaycard and in investment banking.

Varley said critics should "let today's facts speak for themselves". He added: "We have been able to move quickly with a high degree of certainty by going out to friends both old and new."

Barclays shares initially rose 22¾p to 228p but following a conference call with analysts they fell back sharply down 21¼p at 184p.

Sandy Chen of Panmure Gordon said the terms of the capital-raising "seem expensive, particularly after factoring in the commissions paid to the Middle Eastern investors".

Cazenove's Simon Pilkington said: "We believe that investors will welcome the fact that Barclays has raised the money promptly and without support from the UK Government."