January 17th, 2008
IPEG event with Roben Farzad, author of “Can Greed Save Africa?”
We have an event scheduled for Thursday,January the 31st.
Speaker: Roben Farzad, author of Businessweek cover story “Can Greed Save Africa?”
Topic: His motivations for writing the story; preconceived notions;observations and epiphanies in the six countries he visited.
Date and Time: January 31st 2008, Thursday. 6:00-8.00 pm
Venue: W J Warren hall (Amsterdam Ave. and 115th st.) Room 208 (73) Columbia University.
If you would like to attend or have any questions, please e-mail us at emeka[dot]okafor [AT] gmail[dot]com
October 4th, 2006
Private Equity Panel at Columbia Business School
This note is from IPEG member, Christian Lee, who has organized a panel on “The Role of Private Equity in Emerging Market Development” under the aegis of Columbia Business School’s Social Enterprise Program on Friday Oct 6th from 2:45 pm to 4:00 pm. I know it’s fairly short notice, but this really is a terrific event with a super panel and falls right in line with IPEG member interests.
The panelists are:
Tom Barry, Founder and CEO, Zephyr Management
Bert van der Vaart, President and CEO, SEAF
Peter Trooper, Senior Investment Officer, IFC Private Equity Department
Yasmina Zaidman, Portfolio Manager, Acumen Fund
Professor David Beim, co-author of the “Emerging Financial Markets” textbook, will moderate.
The panel was designed to bring together a group of individuals that all make investments in emerging markets, but all with different motivations, expectation of returns, and ways of measuring success. We hope that by having such a diverse group of panelists we can examine some of the key questions at the intersection of development and private sector investment, including, “What role do private equity investors play in emerging market economies?”, “Are positive investment returns synonymous with positive development impacts?”, and ”To what extent can or should investors sacrifice medium-term returns for long-term development in emerging markets?”
If you are interested, please register for the conference here. In addition to this panel, there are a number of other interesting panels, including a discussion on Bottom of the Pyramid strategies, Multinationals and Corruption, etc.
February 27th, 2006
Financing Gaps and the Business Environment
Over at the World Bank PSD blog, Pablo Halkyard makes a post of great relevance to the interests of our group. Pablo links to 3 separate papers at the World Bank, each of them on subjects that we’ve discussed at some point within IPEG.
1. How important are financing constraints? The role of finance in the business environment, by Maksimovic, Ayyagari and Demirguc-Kunt
2. Can foreign portfolio investment bridge the small firm financing gap around the world?, by April Knill
3. Taking the bad with the good: volatility of foreign portfolio investment and financial constraints of small firms, by April Knill
Pablo also points to the World Bank’s updated SME database.