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According to figures from the Bank of England, in 2006, money from developing countries deposited in UK banks surged by over $124 billion - around $10 billion more than in 2005 - lifting total deposits to $514 billion. In 2006, nef revealed that in spite of the UK Government's commitment to increasing its aid budget, another barely noticed trend, the rise in money from developing nations deposited in UK banks, cast questions over the nation's financial role in relation to developing countries. Overall, a range of factors will be influential but, generally, the removal of controls over the movement of money around the world, and 'capital flight' are both likely factors.

Philip Green is the owner of Topshop, Bhs, and a host of other high street brand names. Two years ago, he claimed a £1.2 billion dividend, enough to double the salaries of Cambodia’s entire garment workforce for 8 years. He paid Kate Moss a reported £3 million pounds to put her name to a Topshop line of clothing: a Mauritian worker in a factory that supplies Green’s Arcadia group would have to work for almost 4,000 years to earn that much.

When the East India Company was first established on new year’s eve 1600, Mughal India commanded 22 per cent of global GDP, with Britain producing less than a tenth as much. By the time Britain finally departed India’s shores three and a half centuries later, its national income was more than 50 per cent greater than its former colony.

* Work to re-equip UK and US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has helped profits to soar at defence group BAE Systems.

* The UK's largest defence firm, BAE made a pre-tax profit of £657m ($1.4bn), compared with £378m a year earlier.

* Overall sales at BAE's Land & Armaments business, which includes everything from tanks to munitions, rose 43%.

UN Special Rapporteur Jean Ziegler complained to Caterpillar’s chief executive Jim Owens in May 2004 that Israeli forces were “using armoured bulldozers supplied by your company to destroy agricultural farms, greenhouses, ancient olive groves and agricultural fields planted with crops, as well as numerous Palestinian homes and sometimes human lives”.

Aegis Defence Services is the UK s biggest PMSC [private military security company] success story. The firm's 2003 turnover of £554,000 rose to £62 million in 2005, three quarters of which came from work in Iraq. It became one of the world s largest private armies with the awarding of a US$293 million contract by the CPA in Iraq in May 2004, at a time when the company was two years old and had no experience in that country. Aegis now coordinates the operations of all PMSCs working in Iraq, including handling security at prisons and oil fields. The company is run by Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Spicer, former chief executive of Sandline International of the 1998 Arms to Africa scandal.