Vinny Lingham, South African-born serial entrepreneur and one of the judges on the South African version of Dragon’s Den announced this week that he is founding and funding a new startup venture, Civic, based in Palo Alto, California expected to launch this year.
Lingham said in a statement that Civic aims to tackle the problem of consumer identity theft and reduce online identity fraud.
Civic has just closed a $2.75 million round of seed funding, led by Leverage, an early stage fintech investment fund. Leverage’s founding partner, Howard Lindzon, will also join Civic’s board. Lingham previously founded the digital gift card company, Gyft which he sold in 2014. (Tech Financials)
Interest rate hike announced
The South African Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) announced that it would increase the repo rate by 50 basis points, raising the repo rate – the rate at which the Sarb lends money to banks – to 6.75%.
Banks will increase their prime lending rate by 0.50% taking the rate from 9.75% to 10.25%.
Sizwe Nxedlana, chief economist at FNB says “Despite the weak growth backdrop, the Reserve Bank raised rates at the January MPC meeting are in line with expectations. With inflation likely to rise throughout 2016 and to average more than 6% this year, we expect the SARB’s hiking cycle to continue. The upward trend in inflation will be driven by a combination of meaningful drought-induced food price increases, coupled with sharp increases in electricity tariffs.”
The biggest global risks for businesses
The risk with the greatest potential impact are failure of climate change, mitigation and adaptation, this is according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2016.
According to the report, this is the first time since the report was published that environmental risk topped the rankings, coming ahead of weapons of mass destruction (2nd), water crises (3rd), large-scale involuntary migration (4th) and severe energy price shock (5th). (WEF)
Women entrepreneurs dominate these sectors in America
New data from the U.S. Bureau of Census, by the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce (USWCC), shows that there are some industries where women are doing better than the average.
According to the USWCC report the best industry for female entrepreneurs is transportation and warehousing, where women despite owning 15.2% of the companies bring in 21.2% of sales.
Women-owned firms make up about 9% of the construction industry and bring in 6% of the revenues making construction the second-best economic sector for women. This is followed by agriculture, forestry, and fishing industries. (Inc)
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