an exploration of your owners;

How powerful is the Rothschild banking family? How did they amass their fortune? Just how rich are they? Do they secretly control the world? Sputnik explores.

Media-shy banking firm Rothschild & Co popped up in the news recently when it was revealed that it played a key role in restructuring over $20 bln in Ukrainian debt, including by arranging face-to-face meetings between Kiev officials and vulture funds like Black Rock and Amundi. The Rothschilds are known to have played an active role in carving up Ukraine’s wealth since at least 2014 and the Euromaidan coup.

But in the global scheme of things, despite its rich black soil and immense resource wealth, Ukraine may be just a side project for the banking family, whose role in the creation of the modern international financial order goes back to the 18th century, when German banker Mayer Amschel Rothschild and his five sons forged a global banking empire with offices in Frankfurt, London, Paris, Vienna and Naples.

Emerging in the heyday of European colonial empires, the Rothschilds cashed in on the vast wealth flowing to the continent to create merchant and private banking, asset management, venture capital, commodities, insurance, sovereign debt, media, transport, real estate, pharmaceuticals, mining, and energy enterprises.

Establishing close ties to the British Crown, Mayer and his sons played an instrumental role in financing and operating colonial megaprojects of the day, from the Suez Canal trade artery to the East India Company – the British imperial megacorporation which ruthlessly ruled over India as a private company through much of the 18th and 19th centuries, sucking out untold wealth............more..........