High-flying Business Minister Shriti Vadera has left the Government.
Baroness Vadera - one of Gordon Brown's closest economic advisors - is one of the most influential and controversial figures in Westminster.
Dubbed 'Gordon's representative on Earth', Baroness Vadera spent eight years as economic adviser to Mr Brown while he was at the Treasury.
The 45-year-old former investment banker has a fearsome reputation for speaking her mind. Her tendency to shout has earned her the nickname 'Shriti the Shriek' among civil servants.
Little known outside Westminster, Baroness Vadera was propelled out of the shadows when the Prime Minister made her a junior minister in the Department of International Development in 2007.
Last year, she was moved to the new Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.
Ugandan-born Baroness Vadera's family fled to India in 1972 when Idi Amin expelled Uganda's Asian population. When she was 15, the family moved to England.
She studied at a private school and then Oxford. One of her fellow students described her as 'the ringleader of a rather bitchy group', adding: 'They wanted to rubbish everything.'
After leaving university, Baroness Vadera joined the investment bank UBS Warburg - where she spent much of her time on debt relief and played a role in the partial privatisation of South African Telecom.
She first encountered Mr Brown in the early 1990s.
They hit it off immediately and he asked her to join him in the Treasury in 1999.
Despite being only 5ft 2in, she has developed a reputation for being one of Westminster's most intimidating figures.
Officials claim she has reduced junior staff to tears and she was once supposed to have 'torn strips' off Tony Blair.
During her time at the Treasury she hit the headlines by describing Railtrack shareholders as 'grannies' who 'added no value to the company' during the investors' High Court case against the Government.
Baroness Vadera - who is single - has struggled to get used to being in the limelight.
She once remarked: 'I am publicity-shy and I am not very good at doing the lines to take. I think politicians are very skilled at certain things that I am not skilled at.'
Baroness Vadera lives in one of London's most exclusive areas, Holland Park, and has a holiday home in Italy.
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