Nokia recently appointed Lalita Gupte, an Indian banker who had just retired from ICICI bank, one of the world's most innovative practitioners of bottom-of-the-pyramid finance.

ECONOMIST: The empire strikes back

If a company manages its contracts poorly, it can soon start to resemble a pyramid scheme, in which prepayments from new orders become vital to finance the completion of old contracts.

ECONOMIST: Alstom

The finance minister, Arben Malaj, insists that a Socialist government would not bail out depositors in pyramid schemes.

ECONOMIST: Albania