Senior Barclays executives made sexist comments about financier Amanda Staveley during the bank’s emergency cash call during the financial crisis in 2008, referring to her as a “tart” and a “dolly bird”.

Staveley, whose private equity firm PCP Capital made a £3.25bn investment on behalf of Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, is suing the bank, claiming that she got a worse deal than the Qatari investors during the fundraising. Qatar invested £2bn.