An heir to the German Merck Finck & Co dynasty is contesting the 1990 sale of the private bank to Barclays, according to the Frankfurer Allgemeine Zeitung.

Baron Helmut von Finck has filed a claim with Munich courts claiming that the will of his deceased father, August, stipulates that the family-owned bank should remain independent and that he should have received billions as his inheritance rather than the millions agreed with his half-brothers.

"The last will of my father was to hold the family empire together," Baron von Finck told the FAZ. Now he wants his two half-brothers to be disinherited by the courts "because they broke with the terms of my father's will in selling Merck Finck & Co to Barclays", the paper said. The report was referred to and translated by The Independent, the UK daily.

Merger and acquisition activity has been a feature of the German wealth management industry in recent months, such as deals involving sales by Commerzbank of its non-German private banking businesses. Meanwhile, last year, Deutsche Bank, the country’s largest bank, bought Luxembourg-based private banking firm Sal Oppenheim for €1 billion ($1.44 billion).

In the report on the von Finck story, it was said that Baron von Finck further aims to prove that he was not in a fit state to sign the 1985 contract which bought out his entitlement to one-third of his father's estate, worth billions, for DM65 million. The implications for Barclays are unclear since Merck Finck was sold in 1999 to KBC for some £170 million ($277 million).