The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire | The Secret World of Finance Michael Oswald’s film The Spider’s Web reveals how at the demise of the empire, the City of London’s financial interests created a web of secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth is hidden in British jurisdictions and Britain and its dependencies are the largest global players in The Secret World of Finance.