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Retreat to Bottom Line not an Option
By John Willman Sustainable banking is a term that has acquired new meaning in the past year, as the world?s leading financial institutions have struggled to deal with the US sub-prime lending crisis. Banks that prided themselves on the sustainability of their lending practices have found themselves writing off debt that they had thought was ? almost literally ? safe as houses. Many of the largest have been humbled by the need to turn to emerging mar...
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2nd Annual Social Venture Network Innovation Awards Applications Now Being Accepted,
SAN FRANCISCO, June 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Social Venture Network (SVN), the country’s leading network of socially responsible entrepreneurs, announced today that it is now accepting applications for the 2nd Annual SVN Innovation Awards. The Innovation Awards program supports the next generation of socially responsible business and nonprofit leaders by providing them access to the people and resources to help develop their ideas into successful enterprises. SVN is...
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A Stock Exchange for Do-Gooders
By Mac Margolis Celso Grecco used to think his priorities made perfect sense. My plan was to work hard, get rich and retire, says the 46-year-old S?o Paulo marketing ace. Then maybe I’d take up some worthy social project. For a brass-tacks businessman like Grecco, the rules of engagement were clear. Money came first. Saving the world could wait. He made his name by the time he was in his 30s, coaching corporate stars like the tiremaker ...
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Even the Poorest Can Be a Thriving Market
The idea that global companies can do good and do well at the bottom of the pyramid-that is, among the poor populations of developing countries-has generated excitement among corporations, governments, and NGOs in recent years. But most of the resulting initiatives by multinationals have missed the very poor, the 2 billion people in places like Haiti and Bangladesh who live on less than two dollars a day and have been virtually ignored by the corporate world and cut off from the g...
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ICT for Development Projects Honoured in Swedish Awards
By Katherine Nightingale Projects that use innovative information and communication technologies (ICTs) in developing countries were honoured at the Stockholm Challenge Awards, Stockholm, Sweden, last week (22 May).The awards, which offer a ?5,000 (around US$7,800) prize to winners, seek to reward projects that overcome social and economic disadvantage in six areas: culture, health, environment, economic development, education and public administration. One...
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Seeing Crisis As Opportunity
And it’s not just big businesses getting involved. Mikkel Vestergaard-Frandsen is the CEO of a Geneva-based company that makes a variety of disaster relief products. Mikkel Vestergaard-Frandsen: Entrepreneurs have a can-do attitude that is highly needed to develop new tools, new ideas, new innovation. So far, Vestergaard-Frandsen’s best selling product is a malaria net. But it’s the need for clean water that is driving entrepreneurs like him to produce some ...
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MTN plans takeover of Reliance
South Africa’s MTN is considering a reverse takeover of India’s Reliance Communications as part of talks to combine the pair and create an emerging markets telecoms giant, people familiar with the matter said. The proposal would follow the same structure as one abruptly rejected at the weekend by Bharti Airtel, India’s biggest mobile operator by sales, which until last week was locked in takeover talks with MTN. Under the plan, Reliance Communications’ chair...
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On the Poverty Line
From The Economist Print Edition Has a dollar a day had its day? In December 2007 the World Bank unveiled the results of the biggest exercise in window shopping in history. Scouts in 146 countries scoured stalls, supermarkets and mail-order catalogues, recording the price of more than 1,000 items, from 500-gram packets of durum spaghetti to low-heeled ladies’ shoes. This vast enterprise enabled the bank to compare the...
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