Donald Trump, left, with a model of Chicago’s unfinished Trump Tower in 2003. Photo: AP

Mr Trump, a luxury hotel developer and star of the television show The Apprentice, claims the banks broke agreements over building and financing the 92-storey Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago.

He had been trying to extend a $640 million (£415 million) construction loan from the group, which includes Merrill Lynch, Union Labour Life Insurance, a property investment trust called iStar Financial and a division of Highland Capital Management.

The 1,361ft high development, with 339 hotel rooms and 486 apartments, is due to be completed next year.

But sales of the flats and hotel rooms have been hit by the property slump, and the development’s projected revenue is now some $100 million short of what is needed to pay off the main lenders.

Mr Trump’s lawsuit, filed in New York, accuses Deutsche Bank of selling off pieces of the loan to “so many institutions, banks, junk bond firms, and virtually anybody that seemed to come along” that they were unable to agree on how to deal with the financial shortfall.

Mr Trump has put $77 million of his own money into the tower, which he could lose in the event of a foreclosure.

Deutsche Bank has declined to comment but Steven Schlesinger, a lawyer for Mr Trump, said its “dysfunctional” behaviour “in connection with big loans is a sign of the times”.

Chicago – which, in the Sears Tower, boasts America’s tallest building – has been hit particularly badly hit by the property downturn after a decade in which its skyline was transformed by a skyscraper construction boom.