As the party games turn nasty, Sharapova shows bankers the elegant way to lose

When I bumped into Barclays chief executive John Varley at Wimbledon one mid-week afternoon in July, I thought he looked remarkably relaxed for a man locked in a potentially career-breaking takeover battle with his deadliest rival. We had just watched Venus Williams make mincemeat of Maria Sharapova, and perhaps Varley was cheered by the thought that it was possible to lose elegantly and still be loved by the crowd. Certainly I think he must have decided early in the ABN Amro game that he could do no more than play his best shots and pray for his formidable opponent, Sir Fred Goodwin of Royal Bank of Scotland, to be stricken by the market equivalent of agonising groin strain.

That didn’t happen, and Goodwin should clinch the deciding set this week. In late July Varley raised his bid, though not to a level that trumped the cash-rich alternative offered by RBS in partnership with Fortis of Belgium and Santander of Spain. Barclays might have upped its bid a second time, but only by borrowing heavily and breaching its own return-on-capital rules. Given the skeletons in cupboards that inevitably come with bank acquisitions, it’s highly unlikely institutional shareholders would have supported that proposition, even if it had been feasible to raise the debt in the present credit crunch. But in any case I suspect Varley would not have wanted to do it. If, as expected, ABN shareholders accept RBS’s offer this week, Goodwin and partners may well discover a worldwide wardrobe of ABN skeletons, expensively bought, at a time when most bankers are at home watching their portfolios for a surge in bad debts. I doubt this defeat will break Varley’s career or be judged in the long run to have done his shareholders a disservice. It’s not clear whether the same can be said of Barclays’ exposure to US sub-prime debt and related horrors — rumours abound — but at least Varley will be free of his painful promise to move his office to Amsterdam and available to accept invitations to next year’s Wimbledon.