Posts Tagged ‘mexico’
Posted on October 29, 2008 - by lincolnw
Grameen Trust moves into Mexico with Carlos Slim Foundation
Today, Grameen Trust, international affiliation of Grameen Bank and Fundación Carlos Slim AC, announced the new alliance Grameen-Carso which will donate micro credits to the neediest people in Mexico. Grameen Trust and Fundación Carlos Slim will have equal investments in this alliance and will start operating in areas with higher rate of poverty in Mexico.
Fundación Carlos Slim will provide an initial assets of 5 million dollars and guarantee other 40 million dollars for credit lines of this strategic alliance. Grameen Trust will be the manager of this alliance with experienced people in micro credits brought from Grameen Back. In the long run, Green’s managers will capacitate local managers in order to be in charge of procedures in Mexico.
Grameen-Carso will confer micro credit lines with lower interest rates than other micro credit suppliers in Mexico. This project will be a social company; all the profits will be re-invested in order to increase its operations…{click this link to read the rest of the article}
Posted on October 20, 2008 - by lincolnw
Financiera Independencia Appoints Market Maker
MEXICO CITY, Oct 17, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ — Financiera Independencia, S.A.B. de C.V., SOFOM, E.N.R. (BMV: FINDEP) (”Independencia”), a Mexican microfinance lender of personal loans to lower income segment individuals, announced today that it has appointed Casa de Bolsa Credit Suisse (Mexico), S.A. de C.V., Grupo Financiero Credit Suisse (Mexico) as market maker for the Company’s shares that are listed in the Mexican Stock Exchange. The agreement, effective next week, will be valid for an undetermined period…{click this link to read the rest of the article}
Posted on September 29, 2008 - by James
NY Times: Lenders to the Poor Adopt Guidelines…
MEXICO CITY — For months, the fellowship of institutions providing microfinancing has been angrily divided over the actions of one of its own.
Compartamos, a fast-growing Mexican bank, went public in April 2007 and sold $468 million in shares on the Mexican stock market and gave the cash to its investors. Critics said the bank, based here, was putting profit ahead of clients, contrary to the altruistic ideals of microlending, which specializes in giving tiny loans to the poorest of the poor.
In its defense, Compartamos said that the stock sale showed private investors that microfinance could be profitable and would attract more private capital to the industry.
Now, it seems, the two sides have reached a truce. This week, Compartamos joined a group of microfinancing organizations to announce a code of conduct to protect the microlenders’ clients from being exploited.
Organizations signing the code say it is meant to reaffirm the principles of microlending and set microlenders, which showed the poor were good credit risks, apart from consumer lenders entering the market.
But the campaign was also prompted by the reaction against Compartamos, the microfinancing institution that began as a nonprofit and is now a fully fledged bank with one million clients. Critics say that interest rates charged by Compartamos are too high — some as high as 100 percent — even though the bank’s costs have fallen… [click here to read the rest of this article...]
Posted on September 18, 2008 - by James
Mexico: World Bank Approves Additional US$50 Million for Rural Financing in Mexico…
Mexico City, September 9, 2008—Today the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved an additional US$50 million to assist the Mexican Government in strengthening savings and credit institutions in the rural sector. This project comes about as support to the Public Saving and Credit Law approved in 2001. The Law combined legal and regulatory reforms with public investment to create and strengthen the capacity of the savings and credit institutions in the rural sector, as well as the regulatory agencies that supervise them.
Currently, the World Bank (WB) supports Mexican authorities in this area through the Savings and Rural Finance Project, which is now in its second phase of implementation. The US$50 million will be spent to close the financial gap that arose in the first phase of its implementation. The increase in the project’s cost is due to some changes generated in the Law, particularly in the extension of the deadlines for certification.
“We are very happy to continue supporting the Mexican Government in this effort. To this date, sixty-nine financial institutions have been certified and another three applications are being considered by the National Banking and Securities Commission, the regulatory agency. We also know that there are another two hundred and sixty-six entities that are almost ready to be certified. Jointly, all of them make up ninety percent of the membership in the sector. We hope this takes place by December of 2010¨, stated Axel van Trotsenburg, Director of the World Bank for Mexico and Colombia… [click here to read the rest of this article...]
