LEGATUM is a privately owned, international investment organisation, headquartered in Dubai

Dubai

Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...

, part of the United Arab Emirates

United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates, abbreviated as the UAE, or shortened to "the Emirates", is a state situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman, and Saudi Arabia, and sharing sea borders with Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran.The UAE is a...

. Legatum's mission is to find ways to generate and allocate the capital and ideas that help people live more prosperous lives.

Organisation and Operations

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

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

Legatum Prosperity Index

The Legatum Prosperity Index is an annual ranking developed by the Legatum Institute of 110 countries. The ranking is based according to a variety of factors including wealth, economic growth, personal wellbeing, and quality of life. Norway topped the lists of the the last two reports, those of...

^TM, 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

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

, Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 and Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

.

The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT

Legatum made a structured gift of USD50 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 ("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

Iqbal Quadir

Iqbal Z. Quadir , founder of Gonofone and Grameenphone. He is currently the Founder and Director of the Legatum at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of Advisory Board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology...

, 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 - Prof. Lawrence Klein

Lawrence Klein

Lawrence Robert Klein is an American economist. For his work in creating computer models to forecast economic trends in the field of econometrics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1980...

, Prof. Robert C. Merton

Robert C. Merton

Robert Carhart Merton is an American economist, Nobel laureate in Economics, and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.-Biography:...

, Prof. Eric Maskin

Eric Maskin

Eric Stark Maskin is an American economist and Nobel laureate recognized with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger Myerson "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory." He is the Albert O...

, Prof. Edmund S. Phelps, and Prof. Paul Samuelson

Paul Samuelson

Paul Anthony Samuelson was an American economist, and the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The Swedish Royal Academies stated, when awarding the prize, that he "has done more than any other contemporary economist to raise the level of scientific analysis in...

.

The Legatum Foundation

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.

Investment Activity

A review of Legatum's investment activities can be found at www.legatum.com. A sample of these includes the following investments:

• In December 2009 Legatum sold its entire stake in Financial Information Network and Operations Limited (FINO).
• In July 2008 Legatum announced the $1 million Legatum FORTUNE Technology Prize created to award for-profit organisations, or individuals, whose application of technology solutions has demonstrably improved the quality of life amongst impoverished populations in developing countries. The first winners were announced at the FORTUNE 500 Forum in Washington, D.C., on December 1, 2008, with $1 million being shared equally between Comat Technologies
  Comat Technologies
  Comat is an Indian social enterprise specializing in the delivery of information based services to rural citizens in India. It was founded in 1996 and currently has over 800 rural centers from which it serves over 75,000 citizens each day. In June 2011, Comat was acquired by Glodyn Technoserve, an...
  
   Comat Technologies Pvt. Ltd., and Microfinance International Corporation.
• In May 2008, Legatum joined with Omidyar Network
  Omidyar Network
  Omidyar Network is a philanthrocapitalist investment firm established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam. To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $290 million to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual...
  
   to co-anchor the Unitus Equity Fund II, with each investing USD 20 million
• Since 2006, Legatum Capital has invested significantly in India, with an emphasis on the financial services sector.
• In October 2007, Legatum Capital announced an investment of USD 8.4 million in Intellecap, a firm that provides consulting, business and development services to investors and companies in the social development sector.
• In May 2007, Legatum Ventures invested US$25 million in SHARE Microfin Ltd. (www.sharemicrofin.com), SHARE is one of India's leading and largest microfinance institutions, based in Hyderabad, with over 3 million clients and a loan portfolio of US $497 million. At the time, this was the biggest capital investment of its kind in the sector.
• The Legatum Foundation's recent initiatives include:
  • Funding a project to eliminate seven waterborne diseases from two post-conflict countries in Africa.
  • Funding over 100 community-based projects since 2007 that address education, prevention and care relating to HIV and AIDS.
  • Partnering with Professor Michael Kremer of Harvard University
    Harvard University
    Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
    
     in a study in India, where Legatum’s grant will provide scholarships, covering the full cost of tuition for 6,000 children in 100 villages in Andhra Pradesh, and enabling them to attend primary schools for full five year terms.
  • Funding for 11 anti-slavery projects in Ecuador. The grants provided anti-trafficking education for 143,000 people and rescued nearly 4,000 victims of slavery. The joint efforts of the grantees also resulted in changes to Ecuadorian law to criminalise all forms of slavery and ensure appropriate punishment for convicted traffickers.
  • Alleviating suffering caused by war, famine and other disasters. In addition to funding basic needs such as shelter, food and water, Legatum also funds projects that draw the world's attention to otherwise ignored ongoing crises. One example is Northern Uganda, where Legatum invested in the production of a documentary film and an awareness campaign called "Invisible Children" (www.invisiblechildren.com).
• The first Legatum Pioneers of Prosperity Africa Prize concluded in an awards ceremony in Kigali, Rwanda on November 30, 2007. Small and medium-sized businesses from East Africa competed for a Grand Prize of USD 100,000 and five other prizes of USD 50,000. The 2007 competition was captured in a documentary Unlocking Africa. The 2008 Pioneers of Prosperity Africa Awards were announced in July 2008 and attracted more than 1,400 applicants from 10 nations; winners were announced on November 19, 2008, with the Grand Prize awarded to Superflux International, a security printing solutions company from Nigeria.
• The 2010 Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship was expanded to include 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and was sponsored by Legatum together with Omidyar Network
  Omidyar Network
  Omidyar Network is a philanthrocapitalist investment firm established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam. To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $290 million to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual...
  
  . Winners were announced on December 6th 2010 with the Grand Prize being awarded to Craft Silicon Ltd., a Nairobi-based provider of software solutions for the finance industry.

History

• Legatum was founded in December 2006 by Christopher Chandler, Chairman of Legatum Global Holdings. Mr. 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".

External links

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