Posts Tagged ‘invest’
Posted on June 24, 2009 - by Gavin
Importance of ratings for rural banks underscored…
Business Mirror
IN THESE uncertain times resulting from the global financial
crisis, when investors and lenders are more cautious and
conservative, undergoing a rating could provide rural banks the
much-needed competitive advantage.
This is the sentiment expressed by independent multinational
rating firm Planet Rating’s Asia Office director James
Soukamneuth.
Speaking at the 2009 Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines
(RBAP) Annual Convention, Soukamneuth said ratings provide a lot
of value-added to rural banks and other microfinance institutions
(MFIs).
For one, “Being rated increases a rural bank’s access to funding.
By undergoing a rating, you increase your visibility towards the
investor community and position yourself in the national and
international capital markets,” explained Soukamneuth.
The Planet Rating executive also said undergoing a rating would
enable an institution to know where it stands in comparison to
the global microfinance community.
Posted on June 5, 2009 - by Gavin
Co-op unveils new global development fund…
International Supermarket News
The Co-operative Bank today (5 June) unveiled an innovative new global co-operative development fund aimed at helping to alleviate poverty in some
of the world’s poorest communities. The initiative is very much in line with the ethics that form the central identity of the firm.
The Global Co-operative Development Fund (GCDF) has been created withlong-term partner Deutsche Bank and is the first specialised international development fund to specifically target credit unions and agricultural co-operatives that serve some of the world’s poorest communities.
It is being initiated at a particularly opportune time with some regions seeing cutbacks in development finance, such as funding for microfinance, following the global downturn.
Participation in this fund supports the Bank’s aim to be one of the UK’s leading providers of development finance. Since 2005, the UK only bank has been steadily increasing its commitment to international development and poverty alleviation.
Richard Wilcox Head of Structured and Asset Finance at The Co-operative Bank said: “The co-operative business model of operating for the benefit of its members looks set to emerge stronger from the wreck of the global downturn. (more…)
Posted on June 4, 2009 - by Gavin
Microcredit loans ‘used to buy food’…
Financial Times
Fewer than half of microcredit borrowers invest the money in the grassroots businesses that such loans are intended to foster, new research into poverty alleviation has discovered.
But the claim is disputed by some microlenders, including ASA of Bangladesh, winner of the Banking at the Bottom of the Pyramid category in last year’s FT Sustainable Banking Awards.
Microcredit was devised in the 1970s in Bangladesh by Muhammad Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank to lend small sums to rural women to buy livestock or invest in arming activities or small businesses. Mr Yunus won a Nobel prize three years ago for his work in tackling poverty.
Researchers say microlenders have realised that many extremely poor borrowers are using their loans for other purposes, such as buying food reserves.
This shows that the benefits of this fast-growing system to people outside the traditional banking net are not as have been portrayed by microlenders, say the researchers, although they say it does not undermine the value of the system.
Posted on June 1, 2009 - by Gavin
New MFI to issue property loans…
The Phnom Penh Post
First Finance – a joint venture with Phillip Capital Group of Singapore and private investors – says it will lend to the struggling property sector despite the continuing downturn and bad loans
WHILE most banks remain reluctant to provide real estate loans to customers amid the global financial downturn, a new microfinance institution set to launch June 8 says it will channel lending to house purchases and construction.
“For the first time, home financing will be available to middle- and lower-income Cambodians,” Talmage Payne, CEO of newcomer First Finance, told the Post on Friday. “We are going to offer a product that the other [microfinance institutions] are not touching – loans for house purchasing.”
First Finance is a joint venture between Phillip Capital Group and local individual investors. The Phillip Capital Group is a Singapore-based Asian financial house with operations in eight countries in the Asia-Pacific and Europe. (more…)
Posted on May 20, 2009 - by Gavin
Standard Chartered’s Microfinance Deal Awarded Best Structured Finance Deal – Africa by The Banker…
Standard Chartered
Standard Chartered’s Microfinance Institutional Loans for Africa and Asia’s $93m (MILAA) risk participation deal was awarded by The Banker as one of their Deals of the Year 2009. The deal was awarded by the highly influential publication as the best Structured Finance Deal in Africa and is a clear indication of the Bank’s leading role in the Microfinance Sector.
Standard Chartered acted as the sole arranger on a deal that allowed international investors to get valuable exposure to a growing, but still inaccessible, asset class. MILAA was the first ever issuance of notes backed by loans to micro¬finance institutions in Africa and Asia.
The structure of the deal is novel. While the underlying loans will be provided to microfinance institutions in local currency, investors’ exposure is limited to their original investment in dollars. The deal structure also incorporates a three-year re-investment period which provides investors with a longer-term exposure to the asset class. Participating investors took a pari-pasu interest in the reference portfolio, which ensures alignment of interest between investors and Standard Chartered. (more…)
Posted on May 7, 2009 - by Gavin
‘Portfolios of the Poor’ offers rare look at the financial lives of the world’s poor…
Eurek Alert
BILLIONS of people around the world live on less than $2 per day—what many in the developed world easily spend on a cup of coffee. As global leaders work to stabilize the financial systems of the world’s largest economies, they also have an unparalleled opportunity to include poor households in meaningful reform that expands access to those who need it most.
It may seem nearly impossible to survive on so little, but that perception derives from assumptions about the lives of the world’s poor—assumptions that are often unfounded, but shape and restrict how the world addresses the challenges of living in poverty. In a new book published by Princeton University Press, Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day, Jonathan Morduch, public policy and economics professor at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and director of the Financial Access Initiative, and researchers Daryl Collins, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven, provide the first in-depth examination of how the world’s poorest households patch together their financial existences—and finds that they do so with surprising sophistication and complexity. Portfolios of the Poor offers new thinking about how poor households manage their financial lives and describes fresh ideas for reducing poverty by creating and expanding banking tools and services. (more…)
Posted on March 20, 2009 - by Gavin
Mexico’s Banorte Upbeat On Growth After Strong Start To 2009…
Wall Street Journal
ACAPULCO, Mexico (Dow Jones)–Mexico’s fifth-largest bank Grupo Financiero Banorte SAB (GFNORTE.MX) is cautiously optimistic it can reach its forecast of 10% loan growth this year following good operating results in January and February, Chief Executive Alejandro Valenzuela said.
“They were two very good months in terms of financial margin and in terms of growth,” Valenzuela said in an interview Thursday. “The big question is how much more the Mexican economy could slow.”
The executive said the low use of financial services in Mexico and less competition from foreign-owned rivals are underpinning Banorte’s growth.
“There are foreign banks in Mexico that are pulling back on lending because of financial problems at their parent companies That has opened up opportunities for us,” he said.
Banorte is the largest bank still controlled by Mexican investors after foreign investors acquired five of the country’s top seven banks earlier in the decade.
Bank lending to the private sector has slowed considerably in recent quarters as the economy faces headwinds from a recession in the U.S., buyer of 80% of Mexico’s exports. (more…)
Posted on March 11, 2009 - by Gavin
Investor Blows The Whistle On IMFB…
Leadership Nigeria
A core investor in the first microfinance bank to be licensed in Nigeria, Intergrated Micro Finance Bank (IMFB), Chief Sam Maduka Onyishi, has called on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to inestigate the activities of the bank’s management.
Speaking exclusively with LEADERSHIPyesterday in Abuja, Chief Onyishi, who is also the chief executive officer of Peace Mass Transit (PMT) Limited, stressed that a thorough investigation would reveal fraudulent activities, including distortion of facts and figures, manipulation of records as well as unauthorised and illegal payments to directors of the Lagos-based firm.
He also warned prospective investors not to fall for a plan by the management of the microfinance bank, which has Doyin Abiola as Chairman and Simon Ademola Akinteye as Managing Director, to raise N10 billion from the capital market later this year.
According to him, if nothing is done and the bank succeeds in hoodwinking the public to believe that its fundamentals are right, his fate would be shared by many other genuine investors. “The bank must be stopped from deceiving the public. I want to be the last man it will dupe,” he said.
Posted on March 4, 2009 - by Gavin
Corporations gain a conscience…
Canadian Business Online
Employees, consumers and investors are looking for more meaning from big companies. Are they finding it?
By Paul Klein
As retirement savings, consumer confidence and jobs evaporate, economist Milton Friedman’s famous axiom that “the business of business is business” has hit a wall. Trust has been shaken, faith has been eroded and “business as usual” is no longer an option. The result is that employees, consumers and investors are looking for more meaning from corporations and are putting as much value on a company’s social purpose as on its business purpose.
The numerous recent examples of corporate irresponsibility have fundamentally changed the way we look at business and the way business needs to look at us. The new bottom line is that social concerns of stakeholders matter more than ever. Soon, successful corporations will be those that incorporate community priorities into planning decisions and business operations that result in a positive impact — for society and for business.
At Scotiabank (TSX: BNS), microfinance is embedded into the business strategy of the bank’s international business line. This is creating new economic opportunities for local entrepreneurs, especially women and underprivileged farmers in the Caribbean and Latin America. “When you share what you’re trying to do with people who are internal experts in their area, that’s when the really interesting ideas come out,” says Kim Brand, senior manager, Corporate Social Responsibility for Scotiabank. (more…)
Posted on February 10, 2009 - by Gavin
Govt invests P424M to create jobs for 21,000 workers…
MANILA, Philippines – Around 21,000 previously unemployed or underemployed Filipino workers nationwide have found jobs through various government projects, the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) has announced.
NAPC said this was made possible after the Arroyo administration invested an initial P424.5 million into its Comprehensive Livelihood and Emergency Employment Program (CLEEP) over the past 15 days alone.
NAPC Secretary Domingo F. Panganiban said some 20,958 workers throughout the country have already found new jobs and employment opportunities in the repair and rehabilitation of public health facilities, watershed maintenance and environmental protection programs, and microfinance and cash-for-work projects, among others.
Panganiban’s announcement comes on the heels of President Arroyo’s instructions for all government agencies to consolidate and fast track all of their jobs and employment generation programs under the CLEEP even as the administration prepares to counter the effects of the global financial crisis on the country’s economy and labor force.
“The job generation and emergency employment projects under the CLEEP will benefit not only the workers hired but also their families and the communities in which they live,” Panganiban said… [click here to read the rest of this article...]
Posted on November 19, 2008 - by James
Investing for social impact lures investors…
Community and proactive investing refers to socially responsible investing strategies designed to have some direct, positive social impact stemming from the actual investment.For many investors, this direct connection between their investment dollars and positive social impact makes community investing an appealing SRI strategy. For example, some investors simply find the tangible nature of a community bank deposit more appealing than the often less tangible benefits of social screening or proxy voting.
Typically, the term “community investing” refers to investment options with a strong local or geographic connection. This would include both domestic options such as investing in underserved communities or international options such as microfinance… [click here to read the rest of the article...]
The MiFi Report
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