Business Weekly - Branchless Banking and Bans on Blackberrys.
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We look at how branchless banking may provide access to bank services for the world's poor. We hear how email devices can ruin board meetings, and look at the controversial business of hair relaxers.
Branchless banking may allow millions of poor people access to banking services for the first time. The vision is to provide microfinance services including loans and savings to very poor people. Lesley Curwen talks to Manish Khera, the chief executive of FINO - Financial Information Network and Operations - which operates through a network of local agents in India.
Can email devices distract business people from key decision-making in board meetings? That's the belief of David Beatty who spent a decade managing one of North America's largest food companies. He's Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto. He's calling for a ban on email devices in the boardroom.
And we look at the lucrative market for hair relaxers, chemicals which make curly hair straight, sleek and manageable like Michelle Obama's.
Millions of women have their hair relaxed in salons and millions of others use home-kits. But relaxers are controversial on a cultural level because they make non-white women look more European. And relaxers have sometimes caused damage to hair, or burns to the scalp.
We talk to John Corba, managing director for SoftSheen Carson Europe which is part of L'Oreal, and to the British pop star Jamelia who uses relaxers herself, but discourages her two daughters from doing so.
