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Bharti and MTN discuss sharing top roles
India’s Bharti Airtel and South Africa’s MTN are discussing a management structure for a proposed merger of their emerging-markets telecoms businesses under which they would fill an equal share of key executive positions. Sunil Bharti Mittal, Bharti’s chairman, would be chairman of the merged company, and Phuthuma Nhleko, MTN’s chief executive, would be chief executive of the enlarged group, the FT has learnt. The structure is part of a proposal by Bharti to...
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At MIT, Low-Tech Inventions With a High Impact
By Vijaysree Venkatraman Cambridge, Mass.?? - Amy Smith is not an easy person to track down. Even during the school year, this inventor and instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hops over to remote African towns and Latin American villages. When she is on campus, the best bet for finding Ms. Smith is in her basement laboratory - a cluttered workshop with a long whiteboard, exotic souvenirs, and basic tools - known as D-Lab.
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Quagmire to goldmine?
BRAZIL has long been a thorn in the side of the global drugs companies. The country’s vibrant generics industry has often trampled over their patents. As recently as last year, its government threatened to invoke compulsory licensing (a legal mechanism that, in effect, legitimises such trampling) to browbeat a foreign drugs firm into offering huge discounts. And Brazil’s state-funded researchers have devised some impressive drugs, including a new therapy for malaria (see article). Sma...
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Poor people, rich returns
SINCE CompartamosBanco, a Mexican lender to the poor, went public a year or so ago, a rift has been growing in the booming microfinance industry. To supporters of traditional charitable microfinance?providing loans and other financial services to help lift people out of extreme poverty?the Compartamos initial public offering has come to symbolise an aggressive move by capitalists to profit from the poor. To its backers, on the other hand, the success of Compartamos, despite the recent lacklustre...
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Mobile Banking Needs ?Standardized Innovation?
By Jim Rosenberg Standardized innovation is the phrase used by Dialog Telekom’s (Sri Lanka) Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya at the Mobile Money Summit in Cairo today. In a phrase I think is quite useful, he was summarizing the need to have mobile banking standards, interoperability, worldwide. Right now we are observing many proprietary systems taking shape - most notably, ...
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Renault, Nissan and Bajaj plan $2,500 rival to low-cost Tata car
Renault, Nissan and Bajaj Motors are to jointly build a $2,500 car to compete with Tata Motors’ Nano cut-price family model. The car, called ULC for ultra low-cost, will be made at a new 400,000-capacity joint-venture plant in Chakan, Maharashtra, the three companies said yesterday. Bajaj - best known for its motorcycles - and Renault and Nissan will own 50, 25 and 25 per cent of the joint venture respectively and the car will be sold from early 2011. The...
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Awarding Social Entrepreneurship
The Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation and The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship , in collaboration with United Nations Development Program (UNDP) are inviting applications for India’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2008. Five finalists will be selected following an intensive search and selection process including expert r...
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- One World South Asia
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Small Business Finance – What Works, What Doesn’t?
May 5 and 6 saw an interesting research conference here in DC on Small Business Finance , looking at which banking practices and government interventions help foster small businesses’ access to external finance. Twelve interesting papers and a stimulating panel discussion addressed an array of issues, ranging from banks’ lending techniques over competition, government policies to informal and trade credit. Many papers and speakers questione...
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