Five fascinating business facts – Part 24

50%

The world is watching to see how Egypt will handle the fall out from the 50% increase in petrol price to 27 US cents a litre and doubling of the price of cooking gas announced last Thursday. Still cheaper than in Nigeria you will say.

Egypt is struggling to meet so called conditionalities of a $12bn five-year IMF loan and it must enthrone more stringent reforms to receive the second tranche of $1.2bn in the next few weeks. Egypt raised fuel price by 40% last year to secure the IMF loan.

$900,000

Still on Egypt. Since the Central Bank there floated the country’s pound on November 3 last year, the centre has struggled to hold for many bank customers. Mohsen al-Gedamy had a bank overdraft amounting to $900,000 before the floatation and had left collateral of around 8 million Egyptian pounds but now the bank is demanding he pay another 8 million pounds so he has filed for bankruptcy. Ahmed Hindawi, another bank customer says, “we are not just facing difficulty. We are facing bankruptcy. My debt with the bank is equal to 150% of my equity capital.”

$5.1trn

By every sense, BlackRock is a giant. With $5.1trn in assets under management, BlackRock’s size is more than ten times the entire Nigerian economy. BlackRock’s CEO and Chair Larry Fink says “our principles ground us, unify us and propel us forward. Each day we are a fiduciary to our clients, we are passionate about performance, we are innovators and we are one blackrock.” Indeed.

200,000

In an age when ordinary watches carry more hard drive capacity than the early computers that required a whole building to house, and with Uber giving loans to its drivers, you might wonder which truly is the largest bank in the world today. Africa’s giant Eco bank is responding by using technology to drive reach. About 200,000 banks customers are signed up monthly says CEO Ade Ayeyemi. Disrupt or be disrupted.

$12bn

In 1936, Edsel Ford—son of Henry, the founder of the Ford Motor Company—established the Ford Foundation with an initial gift of $25,000. Today, the foundation are stewards of a $12 billion endowment, making $500 million in grants around the world every year led by Darren Walker, its 10th president. Walker will visit Nigeria later this month.