The Bric summit, which convenes for the first time on Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, is almost certainly the first multilateral nation bloc to be created by an investment bank’s research analysts and their sales team.

Jim O’Neill, Goldman Sachs chief economist, coined the acronym in 2001 to describe the largest of the world’s developing economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – and explain how they were going to shape globalisation in the next 50 years, when he predicted they would come to dominate the global economy.