Author: Mark Piper
It’s the final week of July, and Wall Streeters are turning out for another philanthropic bash, this time for an organization calling itself EMPower. But there’s no champagne or caviar, no grand setting, and not a black tie in sight. The setting is the basement of a downtown bar, the canapes are limited to cheese and crackers, and the attire ranged around the cash bar goes from business-casual down.
Eventually, Craig Cramer takes the microphone, and the whispers about ABN Amro poaching ING Barings’ top-rated sovereign research team die down. EMPower, he says, has been going for over a year, and now, with some $250,000 of commitments behind it, he’s trying to take it to the broader emerging-markets community.
EMPower stands for Emerging Market Professionals Organized for World Resources. It’s funded mainly by individual, not corporate, contributions in the range of $1,000 to $10,000.
EMPower may be a means of assuaging the guilt that comes from touring third-world countries on a seven-figure salary.
“The opening of the economies, the expansion of capital markets, the political reforms: these have not affected 95% of the population” of most emerging-market countries, says Cramer.