A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page. (August 2010)

Legatum is a private international investment organisation, headquartered in Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates.

Organisation and Operations[link]

The Legatum group is active in the international markets for both financial and social capital.

Legatum's activities are undertaken through five divisions:

• Legatum Capital;
• Legatum Ventures;
• The Legatum Institute;
• The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT (LCDE); and
• The Legatum Foundation

The Legatum Institute[link]

The Legatum Institute is an independent policy, advisory and advocacy organisation within the Legatum group of companies. The Institute researches and promotes the principles that drive the creation of global prosperity and the expansion of human liberty. The Institute undertakes original and collaborative research and publishes case studies and ancillary literature. Recent initiatives include the launch of the Legatum Prosperity Index,^[1] which measures prosperity across countries as a combination of material wealth and life satisfaction. The 2010 index included 110 countries and the ranking is led by Norway, Denmark, Finland, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden.^[2]

The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT[link]

Legatum made a structured gift of USD50 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to create a Center which will support the Legatum Fellows. Graduate students at MIT participate in a cross-faculty program with the goal of starting a for-profit enterprise in a developing country.

Iqbal Quadir, founder of Grameenphone in Bangladesh, is the Center's founder and director. In October 2008, the Center hosted its first annual conference around issues of development and entrepreneurship, which brought together five Nobel laureates in economics - Lawrence Klein, Robert C. Merton, Eric Maskin, Edmund S. Phelps, and Paul Samuelson.

The Legatum Foundation[link]

The Legatum Foundation provides humanitarian grants to support community-based projects run by local entrepreneurs in the sectors of Health, Education, Economic Empowerment, Human Liberty, Disaster Recovery and the Environment. Legatum was instrumental in facilitating the creation of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Disease Control (GNNTDC).

Legatum's Prosperity Ladder graphically demonstrates the Group's approach to investment at all levels of the economic and social scale.

History[link]

• Legatum was founded in December 2006 by Christopher Chandler, Chairman of Legatum Global Holdings. Chandler was formerly President of the holding company for the Sovereign Global group of companies ("Sovereign"), which he co-founded in 1986. From 1986 to 2006, Sovereign provided capital to companies and governments in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe, and to industries including telecommunications, electric utilities, steel, oil and gas, banking and oil refining.
• Legatum's name originates from the Latin noun for "legacy", meaning a "gift provided to others without charge".

References[link]

1. ^ "The 2008 Legatum Prosperity Index". Legatum Institute. http://www.prosperity.com/report.aspx. Retrieved 2008-10-14. 
2. ^ "The 2008 Legatum Prosperity Index Overall Rankings 2010". Legatum Institute. http://www.prosperity.com/rankings.aspx. Retrieved 2010-10-30. 

• Economic Times of India article about Legatum (October 2007)
• New York Times article regarding Legatum Center at MIT (September 2007)
• Microcapital Magazine announcement of the largest equity investment in the microfinance sector (May 2007)
• New Times of Rwanda article regarding the Legatum Pioneers of Prosperity Africa Prize (December 2007)
• FORTUNE Fast Forward article regarding the Legatum FORTUNE Technology Prize (July 2008)
• Global Network for Neglected Tropical Disease Control Annual Review (January 2009)

External links[link]

• Corporate website
• Legatum Prosperity Index
• SHARE Microfin Ltd.
• Invisible Children
• Legatum Pioneers of Prosperity Awards
• Legatum Center at MIT

v t e Private equity and venture capital investment firms Investment strategy Venture · Growth · Mezzanine · Secondaries · Leveraged buyout History History of private equity and venture capital · Early history of private equity · Private equity in the 1980s · Private equity in the 1990s · Private equity in the 2000s Investors Corporations · Institutional Investors · Pension funds · Insurance companies · Endowments · Investment Banks · Merchant banks · Fund of funds · High net worth individuals · Angel investors · Family offices · Sovereign wealth funds Private equity firms · Venture capital firms · Portfolio companies

Steven Pearlstein is an American columnist. He writes a column on business and the economy that is published twice weekly in The Washington Post. In 2008 Pearlstein received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "his insightful columns that explore the nation's complex economic ills with masterful clarity," at The Washington Post. In the fall of 2011, he will become the Robinson Professor of Political and International Affairs at George Mason University. ^[1][2]

Pearlstein was raised in Brookline, Massachusetts, and graduated from Trinity College in 1973. He started out in journalism at the Concord Monitor and the Foster's Daily Democrat, in New Hampshire. He was the founding publisher and editor of The Boston Observer, a monthly journal of liberal opinion, and was a senior editor at Inc. magazine for two years. Pearlstein then joined The Washington Post, where he has served as deputy business editor. Pearlstein has also worked as a television news reporter at Boston’s public television station, WGBH-TV. During the late 1970s, he served as administrative assistant to U.S. Senator John A. Durkin and U.S. Representative Michael J. Harrington and was elected to the position of town moderator in West Newbury, Massachusetts. As of 2008 he lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Wendy Gray, and two children.^{[3] [4]}

Pearlstein was heavily criticized by Salon.com opinion writer Glenn Greenwald for allegedly changing his position several times on the bank bailouts following the 2008 economic crisis.^[5]

In August 2009, Pearlstein wrote a column calling those spreading lies about the content of President Obama's health care reform "political terrorists", characterizing them as misleading, disingenous and "poisoning the political well".^[6]

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Steven Pearlstein's Columns in The Washington Post

Iqbal Z. Quadir (Bengali: ইকবাল জেড. কাদীর) (born August 13, 1958 in Jessore, Bangladesh), founder of Gonofone and Grameenphone. He is currently the Founder and Director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of Advisory Board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology. Quadir is also the founding co-editor of Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization, a journal published by MIT Press.

Iqbal Quadir

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Quadir was born in Jessore, Bangladesh and moved to the United States in 1976 and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He passed his Secondary School Certificate from Jhenidah Cadet College, Bangladesh. He received a B.S. with honors from Swarthmore College (1981), an M.A. (1983) and an M.B.A. (1987) from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Finance, development, and entrepreneurial success[link]

Quadir served as a consultant to the World Bank in Washington, D.C., (1983–1985), an associate at Coopers & Lybrand (1987–1989), an associate of Security Pacific Merchant Bank (1989–1991), vice president of Atrium Capital Corporation (1991–1993), and founded Grameenphone in Bangladesh during 1993-1999. He served in the management and on the Board of Grameenphone during 1996-1999.

Quadir’s vision, which was deemed radical at the time, was to create universal access to telephone service in Bangladesh and to increase self-employment opportunities for its rural poor. In 1993, Quadir started a New York-based company named Gonofone^[1] (Bengali for “phones for the masses”), which later became the launch-pad for Grameenphone. Currently the largest telephone company in Bangladesh with nearly sixteen million subscribers, Grameenphone provides telephone access to more than 100 million rural people living in 60,000 villages and generates revenues close to $1 billion annually. With infrastructure investments of more than $1 billion, Grameenphone is providing cellular coverage throughout Bangladesh.

Quadir's vision of a large-scale commercial project led him to organize a global consortium involving Telenor, Norway’s leading telecommunications company; an affiliate of micro-credit pioneer Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize); Marubeni Corp. in Japan; Asian Development Bank in the Philippines; Commonwealth Development Corp. in the United Kingdom; and International Finance Corp. and Gonofone in the United States. He attracted these investors by complementing his vision of connecting all of Bangladesh with a practical distribution scheme whereby village entrepreneurs, backed by micro-loans, could retail telephone services to their surrounding communities. In fact, Quadir coined the phrase ‘connectivity is productivity’ to explain the unique impact of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), particularly mobile telephones, in improving economic efficiency.^[2][3]

Grameenphone’s success has been lauded as a model for a novel approach to improving economic opportunity and connectivity and empowering citizens in poor countries, through profitable investments in technology. According to Economist Jeffrey Sachs Grameenphone ‘opened the world’s eyes to expanding the use of modern telecommunications technologies in the world’s poorest places.’ ^[4]

From 2001-2005, Quadir served as a fellow at the Harvard's Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, and at the Center for Business Innovation at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (now Capgemini). As a lecturer, he taught graduate-level courses on the effects of technology in developing countries at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University. Quadir subsequently moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where in 2007 he founded the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship.

Quadir coined the phrase invisible leg to describe how technological innovations change economies in terms of the distribution of economic and political influence.^[5][6]

Current Projects[link]

In 2004, he founded, with his siblings, the Anwarul Quadir Foundation to promote innovations for Bangladesh. In 2006, the foundation established a $25,000 global essay competition, the Quadir Prize, through the Center for International Development at Harvard University. In October 2007, the foundation made its first award to two recipients.^[7] In April 2009, Stephen Honan was the winner of the second award. Mr. Honan developed an innovative way to extract arsenic from drinking water and soil [1].

Quadir founded Emergence BioEnergy, Inc., as an effort to apply his development approach to electricity production in Bangladesh, where 70 percent of the population does not have access to the national electricity grid. This and other current projects (including removing arsenic from water) were featured in an article entitled ‘Power to the people’ in the March 9, 2006 issue of The Economist. In 2007, Emergence BioEnergy won a Wall Street Journal Asian Innovation Award.

In September 2007, Legatum, a Dubai-based private investment firm, committed $50 million to the creation of a new Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led by Quadir.^[8] The goal of the Legatum Center is the promotion of bottom-up entrepreneurship in developing countries.

Recognition[link]

Quadir's work has been recognized by leaders and organizations worldwide, with invitations to speak at many forums, including the World Bank, United Nations, World Economic Forum, and Aspen Institute. In 1999, Quadir was selected Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum based in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2006, he became the 12th recipient of the prestigious Science, Education and Economic Development (SEED) Award from the Rotary Club of Metropolitan Dhaka, for initiating universal telephone coverage to Bangladesh. He appeared on CNN and PBS and was profiled in feature articles in the Harvard Business Review (Bottom-Up Economics, Aug 2003, & Breakthrough Ideas for 2004, Feb 2004), Financial Times, The Economist, and The New York Times, and in several books. In Spring 2007, Wharton Alumni Magazine selected Quadir for its list of 125 Influential People and Ideas. In 2011, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Swarthmore College [2] and the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from Case Western Reserve University.

The 2007 book You Can Hear Me Now: How Microloans and Cell Phones are Connecting the Worlds Poor To the Global Economy by Nicholas P. Sullivan showcases Quadir’s innovative work in Bangladesh.

See also[link]

• Grameenphone

References[link]

1. ^ Isenberg, Daniel J., et al. 'Iqbal Quadir, Gonofone, and the Creation of GrameenPhone (Bangladesh).' Harvard Business School. March 12, 2007.
2. ^ Quadir, Iqbal Z. ‘For the poor, connectivity means economic opportunity’ in The Wireless Internet Opportunity for Developing Countries by Wireless Internet Institute, United Nations. 2003. Page 27.
3. ^ He's Got Connections. Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs. GetItStarted. Fall 2004.
4. ^ Sachs, Jeffrey. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. New York: Penguin. 2005. Page 264.
5. ^ Quadir, Iqbal Z. ‘The Bottleneck Is At the Top of the Bottle.’ Fletcher Forum of World Affairs Vol. 26(2) Summer/Fall 2002. Page 10.
6. ^ Power to the people. March 2006. The Economist. Page 37.
7. ^ KSG, Quadir award prize for innovations in Bangladesh, Harvard University Gazette website.
8. ^ Corbett, Sara (April 13, 2008). "Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13anthropology-t.html?_r=3&pagewanted=4&oref=slogin. 

External links[link]

• Iqbal Z. Quadir’s MIT Page
• MIT Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship
• Iqbal Quadir Connects His Classroom to the Lessons of Village Entrepreneurs
• “Strengthening the Hands of Citizens”: Iqbal Quadir talks about the GrameenPhone Story
• You Can Hear Me Now Official Book Website
• “How one new company brought hope to one of the world’s poorest countries.” Ode Magazine
• Iqbal Z. Quadir. The Bottleneck Is At the Top of the Bottle. Fletcher Forum of World Affairs Vol. 26(2) Summer/Fall 2002
• Video of Iqbal Quadir discussing the impact of bringing cell phone service to rural areas. Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. (Duration 16:37)
• Anwarul Quadir Foundation
• Official Quadir Prize: Global Essay Competition Webpage at Harvard University
• Differing Visions" Boston Globe, November 18, 2007
• Canadian Broadcast Corporation Sunday - Bangladesh Calling - March 2008
• “A bottom-up plan to turn Bangladesh's economy upside-down Iqbal Quadir wants to help the rural poor” Boston Globe, March 24, 2008
• BBC Radio Panel Discussion on Mobile Banking - May 2008

Nisha Pillai is a journalist based in London. She is one of the main news anchors with BBC World News.

Early life[link]

Pillai was born in Kolkata, India and grew up in Mumbai. When she was 14,^[4] her family moved to London, England. She attended a girls school in Birmingham,^[5] then graduated in analytical economics at the London School of Economics.

Career[link]

After university she joined Schroders Investment Bank, then moved into journalism with the weekly Investors Chronicle. Pillai joined the BBC in 1986, first working on The Money Programme, then Panorama from 1990 to 1995. Her nine-month investigation into financial affairs of media proprietor Robert Maxwell was presented as "The Max Factor", which won an award from the Royal Television Society in 1991. Another of her notable programmes, titled "Underclass in Purdah", reported on Muslims in Britain, and predicted social turmoil and violence.

She joined the BBC World News channel in 1995 as one of the main anchors, presenting the hourly news reports. In 1997 she presented the channel's coverage of Pakistan's 50th anniversary of independence in Islamabad, and, from Jerusalem in 1998, Israel's 50th anniversary of its declaration of independence.

More recently, Pillai gave live coverage of the September 11 attacks and the fall of Baghdad. She has also hosted live interactive debates between audiences in America and in connected studios in Pakistan and Jordan.

She has also presented the BBC's flagship interview programme HARDtalk, and listed her most notable interviewees as Hindu nationalist Bal Thackeray of the Shiv Sena; musician Phil Collins; writer V. S. Naipaul; and Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan.^[4]

Pillai also coaches senior executives in presentation skills at London Business School, records podcast interviews on economic analysis for a ratings agency,^[1] and facilitates many conferences and economic forums.^[2] She counts her understanding of economics and mental arithmetic among her strong points.^[5]

Personal life[link]

She has two children,^[5] and visits India regularly.^[4]

References[link]

http://www.performingartistes.co.uk/artistes/447/nisha-pillai.htm Biog on Performing Artistes page.

External links[link]

• Nisha Pillai, Nisha Pillai Website
• Nisha Pillai, BBC Press Office
• Nisha Pillai, BBC News
• Nisha Pillai at the Internet Movie Database

This article relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (May 2011)

A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page. (February 2012)

Daniel Isenberg is a Professor of Management Practice at Babson Global where he established the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project (BEEP). He has published several seminal articles in the Harvard Business Review, including the April 2011 "Entrepreneurs and the Cult of Failure" ^[1]" and the June 2010 “How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution,”^[2] that was published as the “Big Idea” feature article. Isenberg has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Insead, Reykjavik, Theseus, and the Technion, and has been an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Isenberg speaks and consults frequently on global entrepreneurship and blogs regularly for Huffington Post, Forbes and The Economist. He has also been quoted in Fortune, The Economist, Boston Globe, Success, Yomiuri Shimbun, il Mondi, HaAretz, Nikkei, Business Week, and USA Today.

Isenberg launched BEEP to help societies around the world create the policies, structures, programs and climate that foster entrepreneurship. In this capacity, he has piloted entrepreneurship programs or advised senior policy groups in numerous countries, including Puerto Rico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Spain, Ireland, South Africa, China, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and Israel. He also advises the White House on its Startup America program.

Harvard faculty[link]

Prior to joining Babson in July 2009, Isenberg served for eleven years on the Harvard Business School faculty: From 2005-2009 he taught in the Entrepreneurial Management unit, where he developed the popular course, International Entrepreneurship, for which he wrote 27 international cases. Isenberg also taught in the required first year course, The Entrepreneurial Manager. Isenberg designed and led HBS’s new India and Israel International Immersion Programs on entrepreneurship. From 1981-1987 Isenberg was in the Organizational Behavior unit, and has published three seminal HBR articles: “The Global Entrepreneur,” (2008),^[3] “How Senior Managers Think,” (1984)^[4] and “The Tactics of Strategic Opportunism.” (1987).^[5]

During his first period at HBS in the 1980s, Isenberg conducted research programs in two areas, human interaction in small groups, and managerial cognition, which resulted in publications in top-tier journals such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Academy of Management Journal, etc. He taught Organizational Behavior, Managing Organizational Effectiveness, and Power and Influence. Isenberg has been a consultant to or conducted executive education for Dow Chemical, ABB, Garanti Bank (Turkey), Digital Equipment Corporation, Ford Europe, Mitsubishi, Omron, Mitsui, and others.

Business leadership[link]

Between 1987-2004, Isenberg lived in Israel and was founding CEO of Triangle Technologies, which executes cross-border transactions between Japanese companies and non-Japanese technology companies, and has concluded over 100 discrete deals (joint ventures, OEM agreements, distribution channels, strategic investments, licensing agreements, etc.). During that period Isenberg helped establish two venture capital funds and was general partner in one of them. From 1987-1989 he created a course at the Technion called Technology-Based Entrepreneurship, co-founded and co-directed the Tefen Entrepreneurs Program with Stef Wertheimer, and directed the Technion Entrepreneurial Associates with Professor Ed Roberts from MIT. Isenberg has served as director of several private and NASDAQ-listed companies.

Education[link]

In 1981 Isenberg received the Ph.D. degree in Social Psychology from Harvard University under the mentorship of Robert Freed Bales.

Personal[link]

Isenberg maintains homes in Boston and in his home town of Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and has 4 grown children.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Babson.edu
• BEEP Project Site
• Babson.edu Faculty
• Economist blog
• Forbes blog
• Huffington Post blog
• Harvard Business Review blog