Banca Armada: new resource from Centre Delas

Centre Delas have published a new resource, illustrating the involvement of the financial industry with the arms trade. Banca Armada allows users to explore how – between 2011 and 2017 – different banks, insurance companies, asset management companies, sovereign wealth funds, and some pension funds and public institutions financed the activities of the arms industry. The database covers over 500 financial institutions, and a total of $508,482,640,468 of investments.

Using the resource, it is possible to filter down to particular financial institutions, arms companies, or countries. Information on financing is broken down into three key areas: underwriting of bond and share issuances, loans granted to arms companies, and the ownership or management of shares and bonds of arms companies. Users can also filter down to the financial institutions with headquarters in a particular country. It is also possible to filter the data by arms company, which displays the various “armed banks” that are investing in that company.

The data has mainly been compiled from the Centre Delas' “Banks that Invest in Weapons” report, published in 2016, but also uses figures from two reports from PAX: Don't Bank on the Bomb report (which identifies financial institutions that invest in companies building nuclear weapons) and Worldwide investments in Cluster munitions, a shared responsibility.