MICROFINANCE EVENT: United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) Roundtable 2009, presented by the United Nations, October 22-23, 2009 at Cape Town, South Africa
United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), presented by the United Nations, October 22-23, 2009 at Cape Town, South Africa
October 22-23, 2009 at Cape Town, South Africa
See Our Comprehensive Event Calendar Here: http://microfinanceassociation.ning.com/events
Event Name: Opportunity Collaboration Summit
Event Date: October 17-20, 2009
Event Location: Ixtapa, Mexico
See Our Comprehensive Event Calendar Here: http://microfinanceassociation.ning.com/events
MFX Solutions Inc. (MFX), a new company based in Washington D.C. in the United States dedicated to providing microfinance currency risk solutions announced the launch of its hedging operations recently, according to a press release on the electronic news and information portal PR NewsWire. With the launch, MFX, in keeping with its mission to ‘make sure that existing flows of microfinance lending are not disrupted by currency devaluation’, will focus on making modern hedging instruments accessible to microfinance lenders in developing countries. As per information available on their website, MFX will focus on ‘high-risk markets in Africa and elsewhere where hedging can have a transformative effect’. Additionally, MFX will also create education programs in the form of easy-to-use web-based tools designed to help MFI managers analyze the risks they face under different economic scenarios. (PR Newswire is headquartered in New York, USA and is a subsidiary of the London based global business media company United Business MediaPlc).
The LeapFrog Financial Inclusion Fund recently announced that it has raised USD 44 million. This was reported on several news portals including Bloomberg, the Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire, the Press Portal website and CNBC. The fund has been billed as the world’s first investment fund that is focused on microinsurance. The fund aims to invest in or partner with businesses that offer insurance products and financial services to low-income communities throughout Africa and Asia, including India, Pakistan, South Africa and Uganda.
The White House has nominated the president and CEO of ACCION International, Ms. Maria Otero, to assume the position of Under Secretary of Democracy and Global Affairs in the US Department of State. Although the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has yet to approve the nomination, Ms. Otero has indicated that she will accept the position should her nomination be successful. Ms. Otero has been profiled in MicroCapital’s Who’s Who in Microfinance series in May 2007. Her position at ACCION International will be filled temporarily by Ms. Catherine Quense, Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Deputy, while a committee searches for Ms. Oteros successor. Ms. Diana Taylor, Vice Chair of the ACCION Board, comments, “Her nomination as Under Secretary comes as no surprise to those of us who know her and her deep commitment to social and economic justice, and we know that she now has an even more effective platform from which to help build better lives for the world’s citizens.” Ms. Otero was born and raised until the age of 12 in La Paz, Bolivia, whereupon she and her family moved to Washington DC. She holds a BA in Literature from the University of Maryland and an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins. She has been with ACCION since 1986 and became CEO in 2000. ACCION International is a microfinance organization founded in 1961 and consisting of 27 partner microfinance institutions (MFIs) in 20 countries. The position of Under Secretary of Democracy and Global Affairs was established under Section 161(b) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1994 and 1995. In total, there are five Under Secretaries of State in the Department of State, headed by Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) announced it is providing a EUR 2 million (USD 2.6 million) grant to support the AfriCap Microfinance Fund through FinTech Africa, to fund capacity building for early-stage and greenfield microfinance institutions across Africa. In addition to the EIB grant, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will contribute a USD 5 million grant to FinTech Africa, the non-profit organization that manages AfriCap’s technical services facility, and the Dutch development agency, FMO, will provide a USD 0.75 million grant.
Opportunity Collaboration Summit
October 17th-20th, 2009, Ixtapa, Guerrero, Mexico
United Nations publication, African Renewal reported that a group of three hundred women in South Africa, called the Pankop Women Farmer’s Forum, has received a loan of approximately USD 1 million from local commercial banks to invest in a fruit and vegetable dehydration plant called Diretsogetse Pankop Fruit Processing (Pty) Ltd. The loan was extended with the understanding that if the women are unable to repay the loan, that the South African based Thembani International Guarantee Fund would assume USD 800 thousand of the losses.
Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), an International Development Organization founded in Bangladesh announced the launch of the BRAC Africa Loan Fund to provide microfinance loans to poor borrowers in Tanzania, Uganda and Southern Sudan. In a press release found on PRNewswire, BRAC announced that it has raised USD 62.6 million of capital towards the loan fund. The release stated that the Africa Loan Fund would provide long-term, local currency funding that would enable BRAC to scale up its microfinance operations to reach over 700,000 borrowers through over 200 branches across the three East African countries.
The Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), an autonomous fund administered by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), will provide up to USD 20 million in financing to the Emergency Liquidity Facility (ELF), a fund located in San Jose, Costa Rica. According to a press release on the IDB website, the funding would be used to help Latin American and Caribbean microfinance institutions ‘weather economic crisis and natural disasters’ and overcome liquidity shortages.
Source: Inter-American Development Bank
JANUARY 12 TO 13, 2009, NEW YORK CITY, USA
In January, a socially-conscious investment conference organized annually by Foundation & Endowment Money Management, Money Management Letter, and the Social Investment Forum will be held at the Union League Club located at 38 East 37th Street in New York City. This year’s theme is “ESG on the Ground: Enhancing Profitability through Sustainable Investing.” The third such conference of its kind, the conference this year has been expanded to two full days and will include a half-day workshop entitled, “A Practical Guide to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI),” which will be led by the PRI Secretariat. The conference is open to those who hold leadership positions anywhere along the spectrum of investment organizations, from hedge funds and private equity firms to public foundations and family offices.
CAPITAL MARKETS AND THE CRISIS
Source: Investment News.
In late October, 35 microfinance institutions (MFIs) and investment funds signed the Client Protection Principles (CPP), a list of pro-consumer principles and mandates that aims to become an industry-wide standard for ensuring the fair treatment and financial protection of low-income microfinance clients. The CPP are part of a larger campaign launched in September of 2008 at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, a conglomeration of governments and public and private organizations dedicated to sustainable development, with the goal of incorporating at least half of the world’s 500 largest MFIs within the next three years. According to Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), there is little evidence of client abuse in the microfinance sector.
The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a United States federal agency, has announced a USD 350 million financing plan towards private equity investments in Latin America. The plan was approved by OPIC’s Board of Directors to finance three approved new funds in order to provide capital across several economic sectors, including microfinance. The private equity funds are the Greylock Latin America Opportunity Fund, the Latin Power and Infrastructure IV Fund, and the Altra Private Equity IV Fund (APEF). The investment will allow these funds to achieve a combined capitalization of USD 1.45 billion.
NOVEMBER 13-14, AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
Brooklyn Bridge – Triple Bottom Line Investing (TBLI) Group will host the TBLI 2008 Europe Conference, an annual international learning and networking event focusing on sustainable development, from Thursday, November 13 to Friday, November 14 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky. The conference runs from 9:00am until 5:30pm (Central European Time) each day. There is an additional one-day seminar on Wednesday, November 12 entitled “Integrating ESG Into Portfolios.”