A senior Bangladeshi minister has said that comments by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the globally acclaimed microlender Grameen Bank and its founder were "unwarranted."
Food giant Nestle, which has clocked up better than expected growth despite the economic downturn, is now extending micro credit to its suppliers to get them through the tough times.
Nestle S.A. CEO, Paul Bulcke talks to CNN's Marketplace Europe about maintaining growth in the current economic climate.
Starbucks Corp. unveiled a program Monday to help raise money to spur hiring among small businesses.
Since founding Quacker Gift Shop in 2005, Jennifer Brown and Steve Kudron get this question a lot: Is there money in selling rubber ducks?
Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has resigned as managing director of the bank he founded in Bangladesh a week after the country's supreme court rejected his appeal to keep his post.
Bangladesh's Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus to keep his position as managing director of the bank he founded.
It has been lauded as one of the most promising ways of using the market to reduce poverty and boost economies in some of the world's most deprived areas.
The Bangladeshi government has been asked to find a compromise to bring an end to the Grameen Bank crisis created by removing its founder, microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus.
A day after the High Court upheld the removal of Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus from his position as managing director of Grameen Bank, the appellate court in Dhaka on Wednesday set a new date to hear his petitions.
Bangladesh's top court Tuesday upheld the central bank's decision to remove Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus from his post at the pioneering bank he founded.
It's not often that a Nobel Peace Prize laureate gets fired, but the Bangladeshi government said Wednesday it did just that in dismissing Muhammad Yunus from a top post in the pioneering bank he founded.
Muhammad Yunus won a Nobel Peace Prize for the Bangladeshi bank he founded but now he finds himself in a bitter fight to retain his job.
A Nobel Peace Prize-winning idea to alleviate the poor is under attack, as is the man who won the prize.
The Bangladeshi government has called on Nobel laureate and microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus to retire from the bank he founded nearly three decades ago to help the poor, but he has said no.
Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus faced fresh legal trouble in his home country of Bangladesh on Thursday, accused of producing "substandard" yogurt meant for the poor, officials said.
Micro-credit pioneer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus appeared in a Bangladesh court Tuesday on a defamation charge for reportedly criticizing politicians four years ago, court officials said.
Bangladesh has ordered a probe of the Grameen Bank -- founded by Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, the pioneer of microcredit -- following media allegations that donor's funds were inappropriately transferred.
The Small Business Administration announced two new lending initiatives on Wednesday aimed at getting relatively modest loans to small businesses quickly.
The co-founder of Kiva.org talks about how her work with microloans has brought new power to people living in poverty.
One evening, when I was 24 years old, I heard Dr. Muhammad Yunus speak to a small classroom of Stanford University students. I was not a student at the time, so I crashed the lecture and sat quietly on the steps in the back of the room. What I heard that night changed my life.
There's a debate brewing in the world of do-gooder banking, pitting the father of microfinance Muhammad Yunus against a few entrepreneurs who have put an unlikely spin on Yunus' model of lending to the poor.
After Salah Boukadoum sold his tech company, Atrana Solutions, for a cool eight figures -- something most entrepreneurs only fantasize about -- he faced a mini existential crisis: What next?
CNN's Emily Chang reports on a microfinance firm that helps Chinese farmers start small businesses.
Like millions of Chinese, Fu Yajun left her hardscrabble life in the countryside for the promise of high wages at a coastal factory town.
In the Bugesera region of Rwanda -- a land known for its sorghum farming and also its poverty -- an experiment in capitalism is taking place. For lighting, most villagers here use kerosene lamps, which cause air pollution and lung disease and are a severe fire hazard. Annonciata Mukandekwe, a 50-year-old basket weaver, has a better idea. She spends an hour a day pedaling a small generator that charges LED lights. In her first two weeks in business, this widow sold 140 of the $6.58 lamps to her fellow villagers. Mukandekwe earns $3.78 a day in charging fees -- more than triple the daily income in rural Rwanda. Her customers get safe, clean lighting at one-tenth the cost of kerosene.
As Haiti continues to dig out from the earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince, local microlenders are gearing up to begin rebuilding the country's shattered economy.
Goldman Sachs' banking titans and top congressional Democrats don't often see eye to eye -- executive pay caps, anyone? But here's something the megabank and Capitol Hill agree on: One of the best ways to get financing to worthy small businesses is through a little-known community lending vehicle called a CDFI.
Goldman Sachs earned an eye-popping $3.2 billion last quarter. Now it's decided to share some of that with the little guys.
When the borrowing gets tough, the tough keep trying.
When the economic downturn took hold last autumn, the management team at non-profit Kiva.org made a calculated bet to curb investment, anticipating that donors would slow the volume of small loans they make to entrepreneurs in the developing world. That slowdown never came. Now, the non-profit site is racing to keep up with user demand even while planning to bring its unique form of charity to the U.S.
The number of small business loans banks issue has cratered since the recession took root last year. Rebuilding that number is the focus of the small business provisions in the economic recovery bill that President Obama signed into law on Tuesday.
Most retired CEOs don't really retire. They serve on boards, teach at business schools, fund charities. Percy Barnevik's retirement plans are more ambitious: He intends to lift millions of people out of the world's deepest poverty.
The Finn Martti Ahtisaari has made a career of forging peace through the hard slog of conventional diplomacy
Solar lights are brightening the nightime sky in Baghdad and making the streets safe. CNN's Arwa Damon reports
It has been said before that environmental-friendliness is a luxury few can really afford.
A bank operating on a concept that has lifted thousands of people out of grinding poverty in the developing world has set its sights on helping the poverty-stricken in America.
A Nobel Peace Prize winner has opened a bank to help the poor in New York City, as CNN's Richard Roth reports.
A new study reveals that when microfinance institutions go commercial, they tend to loan to fewer women
Lovisa Asinde is a Ugandan widow who supports herself and her five children selling food. She started the small business eight years ago, and planned to open a larger restaurant in the center of her town.
Dear FSB: Where can I get a small start-up loan for my business?
Microfinance is one of the hottest topics in development, all the more so since Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi pioneer of the practice, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
Every year for the last nine years, world business leaders and thinkers have gathered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia's second largest city for the Jeddah Economic Forum.
Dear FSB: In my country, Tunisia, you can't get a bank loan unless you already own a business based in Tunisia. Where can I find financial help to get started?
Robert Duvall's heroes are Carmen Velasco and Lynne Patterson -- two women who are changing the lives of other women throughout Latin America one loan at a time.
CNN's Anjali Rao talks to Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus about his pioneering work in microcredit.
Muhammad Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his pioneering work in microcredit, which has helped millions of people out of the poverty cycle. The first businessman ever to receive such a high honor, Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded revolutionized conventional ways of banking, creating a system of lending money to the poor, mostly women.
[HIT] Hello kitschy. How do you make a splash in Japan's booming minicar market selling yet another tiny box with an engine a third the size of a Honda Civic's? If you're Nissan, you dub your car Pino (after Pinocchio) and pitch it to young women who can't resist upholstery embossed with stars and sparkly hubcaps "inspired by snowflake crystals." And that's just the start of the cute-sell: A Nissan website also lets the ladies accessorize with stuffed animals and heart-shaped decals and then e-share the sugary visuals with friends. The payoff: Since the car's launch in January, Nissan has been beating sales forecasts by 15 percent while pricing the Pino's base model 23 percent higher than the Suzuki Alto, the plain-Jane mini on whose platform the Pino is built.
When she turned 60, Dana Dakin was in a great place. The investment-marketing firm she'd founded 30 years earlier, Dakin Partners (dakinpartners.com), was so successful that it was turning away bus...
When Narisara Panya's husband died of AIDS seven years ago after returning to Thailand from a construction job abroad, it was devastating. With only a small plot of land that didn't always yield en...
On April 26, when the shareholders of French food giant Danone congregate in Paris for their annual meeting, they will have a unique proposal to consider: setting up a mutual fund to channel investment into Danone's nonprofit social ventures in developing countries.
CNN Connects: "India's Generation Next" examines the social, political and economic issues confronting young people across India, with distinguished panelists and a studio audience of about 100 young people. CNN Connects will be a joint production of CNN International and CNN-IBN -- airing on both networks in mid-March.
When Muhammad Yunus traveled to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month, he came prepared to fight for management control over a company he believes is sucking profits from the poo...
Along a dirt road in Bangladesh's green, fertile heartland, 140 miles northwest of Dhaka, workers in flip-flops are hauling bricks, pouring cement and hammering boards. The object of their labor: a...
Salvador Guzman, 46 Guzman Group of Mexican restaurants Nashville
The winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize is Muhammad Yunus, founder of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank and a pioneer of microfinance. Grameen lends small sums to farmers and entrepreneurs. The idea is...
6 organizations looking for volunteers and support for Katrina-affected areas.
When Muhammad Yunus travels to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize Dec. 10, he will come prepared to fight for management control over a company he believes is sucking profits from the poor of Bangladesh.
Vikram Akula is on an economic mission: to empower India's poor.
Forget billion-dollar development projects. When Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus surveyed a poor village in the mid-1970s and found that all the money borrowed totaled just $27, he set out to ...
It all started with $50. In 1988, that's what it took Noni Bala Ghosh to revive her family's business of making sweets to sell in Kholshi, her tiny village in Bangladesh.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - If you've got 25 bucks, a PC and a PayPal account, you've now got the wherewithal to be an international financier.
Pierre Omidyar, 38, is one of the world's richest idealists. With stock in eBay worth $8.4 billion, the founder of the auction giant and his wife, Pam, are starting to give money away. In early Nov...
More and more people over 50 these days are starting at home businesses. Some are worried about the prospect of having enough in retirement, but others simply want to remain active.
A Private Backer
Credit Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina with nerve. Even as her company's sales growth stalls and its stock rests near its 52-week low, she's thinking of more than just short-term fixes.
Sitting atop a bluff overlooking the Pacific, Scott Blum's house is a modernist fantasy that sticks out from the drab, conservative homes around it. Most of the other houses in Ritz Cove, a plush, ...
Cash-hungry entrepreneur joel Hensley wasn't about to let rejection grind him down. In early 1994, the 27-year-old owner of Market Street Coffee & Tea in Fresno, a three-employee store with annual ...
Small loans are often the toughest to get, because lenders consider the potential profit not worth the paperwork. Therefore, if you need between $100 and $25,000, you might turn instead to nonprofi...
Geneva Green is turning a hobby into a moneymaker. She now sells the silk flowers and dried-grass arrangements she makes in the housing project where she lives. She and other low-income entrepreneu...
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