Packaging specialist Coresa was established in Chile in 1966. “We started making flexible containers from polypropylene in the 1980s and also some fabrics for specific applications,” says managing director Jose Ignacio Arrate, “so we’ve been making these products now for thirty years, and the company has been in existence for nearly fifty years altogether.”

BHP said that production had jumped by nine percent to 187 million tonnes for the year to 30 June, news that analysts have reacted to by claiming it meant that the commodity giants were betting on continued strong demand from China, despite the country's economy seeing a slowdown in growth.

On March 1 this year ACCL International’s President, Haji Habibullah Pirzada, opened the company’s newly built headquarters in Kabul. ACCL is an Afghanistan-based company that makes use of its unique approach to partnership in a variety of post-conflict or underdeveloped regions worldwide to create wealth. It is a sign of the success of this unusual company that it had grown out of the premises it occupied since it was established in 2003.

The broker-dealers latest quarterly results show that it made $1.9 billion in the three months to the end of June. This compares with the $927 million it recorded in 2012 and comes amid what can be described as tougher trading conditions.

Its earnings were lifted by big returns on its own investments in shares and debts, which generated $1.4 billion in net revenues, up from $200 million a year ago. The profit that Goldman made on its own investments came as it sold off its last remaining shares in Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

We have a somewhat complex relationship with leadership in the UK. Whilst by nature we tend to be a largely compliant nation, rarely has public opinion of our constitutional leaders been lower - and criticism louder. Furthermore, resentment of the part played by financial leaders in the economic crisis has been exacerbated by media reports of the pay offs and bonuses handed to banking bosses.

Last week, JP Morgan recorded a profit of $6.5 billion for the three months to the end of June, up 31 percent from 2012. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo also reported a 20 percent rise in profits to $5.27 billion.

Revealing plans for the overhaul the company’s chief executive Steve Ballmer said that it would become more streamlined around devices such as phones, games consoles and services. The move comes amid a decline in demands for personal computers, as consumers turn to tablets and other mobile devices.

That is the view of the African Development Bank (AfDB), who state in a new report that one-third of Africa's countries have gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates of more than six percent.

The report highlights that the continent's middle class is growing rapidly with around 350 million Africans now earning between $2 and $20 a day, while the share of the population living below the poverty line in Africa has fallen from 51 percent in 2005 to 39 percent in 2012.