Barclays said yesterday it spent about £100m on its futile attempt to buy Dutch bank ABN Amro last year, but the UK company said it was not out of pocket because the costs were easily covered by the break fee it received.

Barclays said yesterday it spent about £100m on its futile attempt to buy Dutch bank ABN Amro last year, but the UK company said it was not out of pocket because the costs were easily covered by the break fee it received.

Barclays said expenditure included some £5m paid to adviser Naguib Kheraj.

The battle to capture the Dutch bank, the biggest takeover of a bank yet, raged from March until a consortium made up of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Dutch-Belgian financial group Fortis, and Spanish bank Santander, sealed the 7bn deal in October, but few details of costs for the dozens of bankers, advisers, lawyers, printers and others involved have been made public until now.

Barclays had agreed to a merger with ABN and was paid a 200m (£157m) break fee when its partner pulled out.

Barclays' annual report, released on Wednesday, said its 2007 expenses were cut by £58m because of the break fee net of transaction costs, indicating costs were just under £100m.

The report showed Kheraj, Barclays' former finance director and a City high-flyer, was paid £600,000 per month for advisory work related to the ABN deal during an eight-month period.