Twice in the space of a fortnight, Barclays was forced to borrow funds from the central bank's overnight lending facility. It blamed HSBC the first time and a technical glitch in the clearing system the second. The Barclays share price was dropping like a stone. The prospects of its all-share bid for the Dutch bank ABN Amro were diminishing by the second. It was now almost 20 per cent adrift of a rival offer from a consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland. Diamond finally broke his silence in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph three weeks ago, insisting that he had no black holes on his balance sheet. "We have no liquidity issues at Barclays," he said. "In an excited market, people were jumping to conclusions that just weren't there."