In what might seem like a strange move, the Spanish Bank Santander has recruited one of the British Army’s finest leaders to enable the bank to ride the bow wave of the massive increase in defence spending across Europe. Some experts predict defence spending to top £500bn over the next 10 years, and that requires a lot of smart financing. After years of stagnation and depleted armies across Europe, President Putin has given a massive shot in the arm to the defence industries, with many British companies in the van of this battle. It’s past time our bankers got serious about financing new weapons and General Sanders is just the man to help.

Knowing Patrick Sanders, and knowing the defence industry, as an occasional specialist consultant since I left the Army, I’d gauge this as a pretty smart move. My feeling, having sat on both sides of the defence fence, is that the military instinctively think big business is trying to rip them off, and the commercial side thinks the military do not know what they want, and if they do, aspiration and resource seldom match.