Black MBA - Summer 2008 - (Page 13)

STUDY DETAILS DISCRIMINATORY CREDIT PRACTICES AFRICAN AMERICANS AND Hispanics have a harder time obtaining credit than whites, reported a new study by economist Ethan Cohen-Colen of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. After factoring in housing vacancy rates, crime and population demographics, Cohen-Cole found that both African Americans and Hispanics are disadvantaged in terms of the amount of credit typically offered to them. Cohen-Cole found that, when studying 285,780 individuals nationwide and their credit files, a 1 percent increase in African Americans in a neighborhood resulted in, on average, a $123 drop in credit. More widely, shifting from an 80 percent white area to an 80 percent Black area resulted in an average credit drop of $7,357. This statistical gap was directly rooted in credit scores; the study showed that African Americans were rewarded in smaller increments than whites for an increase in score, and in turn penalized in larger increments than whites for a decrease. The online business site www.marketwatch.com reports that Cohen-Cole’s research is similar to other statistics CORPORATIONS HONORED FOR DEALINGS WITH WOMANOWNED BUSINESSES THE WOMEN’S BUSINESS Enterprise National Council (WBENC) recently released a list of companies for 2007 that it considers most friendly to women’s business enterprises. Its “America’s Top Corporations for Women’s Business Enterprises” identified companies that were best at maintaining level playing fields when it came to woman-owned businesses competing for corporate contracts. Ranked at the top of the list are AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent, Avis Budget Group, Bank of America, Chevron, Energy Future Holdings (formerly TXU), Exxon Mobil, IBM, J.C. Penny, Office Depot, PepsiCo, Shell Oil, The CocaCola Co., UPS and Verizon. WBENC hosted an award ceremony for the top companies in late March in Washington, D.C. The council created the ranking and awards in 1999, and AT&T, Energy Future Holdings and UPS have topped the list every year since its inception. – www.wbenc.org about discriminatory credit practices. For example, African Americans typically pay 1.5 percent more on auto loans than whites, according to a Consumer Federation of America report. In the same report, lenders were shown to more aggressively market risky adjustable-rate mortgages to individuals with low credit scores, resulting in 37 percent of Hispanics and 31 percent of African Americans with adjustable-rate mortgages, compared to 23 percent of whites. – www.marketwatch.com ONLINE ROUNDTABLE FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS S L I N G S H O T, A NEW online forum desig ned to facilit ate t he exc ha nge of idea s, adv ice and support among small business owners, was recently launched by the financial holding company Capitol One in Denver, Colo., and Raleigh, N.C. By logging onto Slingshot’s Web site, www.joinslingshot.com, small business owners can create online business profiles that include the names and locations of their companies and information about their products and services. Capitol One hopes to create in Slingshot a marketplace where small business owners can make networking connections, attract customers and learn about other businesses in their communities. The Web site also gives customers the opportunity to rate their experiences with small businesses’ products and services and recommend them to other customers. – www.capitolone.com BlackMBA • Summer 2008 13 http://www.marketwatch.com http://www.marketwatch.com http://www.joinslingshot.com http://www.wbenc.org http://www.capitolone.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Black MBA - Summer 2008

Black MBA- Summer 2008 Contents Mailbag Up Front From the President & CEO Politics of Change Catalyst for Change: Results of our 2008 Political Poll Know Whose Shoulders You Stand On: The Legacy of H. Naylor Fitzhugh Howard University: Changing With the Times Straight Talk: CEO to CEO Creating Your Own Sandbox Dual Threats Avoiding the Faux Pa Invest in Your MBA Everything You Need to Know About...Estate Planning On Campus Plan Ahead The Big Show What's in a Name? On the Move Market Forecast Jeff Friday Keith Wyche Life Lessons On the Ground Real Biz A Golden Opportunity Entrepreneurial Institute Tech Tools Read for Success Stacey Tisdale Advertiser Index

Black MBA - Summer 2008

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