Yunus, who had been managing director of Grameen Bank since 1999, is 70 years old.
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"I believed this would be a momentous development, as big as Bangladesh's Grameen Bank, " he adds.
Grameen sees its cash deposit multiply twelvefold on its way to the poverty-stricken borrower.
Grameen Danone Foods, a yogurt-maker, and Grameen-Veolia, a water company, are joint ventures with French giants.
Discomforted, the Norwegian government asked Grameen Bank, which had originally been given the funds, to retain ownership.
ECONOMIST: A microfinance pioneer is under attack in his homeland
But the release of the documentary led to sharp attacks on Mr Yunus and Grameen in Bangladesh.
ECONOMIST: A microfinance pioneer is under attack in his homeland
This is controversial, to put it mildly, not least because some Grameen firms have big foreign partners.
Grameen Bank is a microcredit organization that strives to fight poverty via small loans to impoverished Bangladeshi populations.
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Yunus and Grameen are well-known brands, especially in the developing world, where Danone does 45% of its business.
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These were the basic gaps that prompted the Grameen Bank and others like it in their early days.
But Grameen organises borrowers into groups which guarantee a loan to any member (exerting peer pressure for repayment).
Just ask the great microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank -- women are the best bet.
His Grameen organisation has helped educate thousands of people who now find themselves with a degree but without employment.
So when a Grameen-backed phone entrepreneur sets up shop, the whole village is suddenly connected to the outside world.
More established institutions like Grameen and others, he says, don't operate like that.
This program is a perfect example of the share value principle both for Adidas and for the Grameen Bank.
The joint venture with Grameen helps Danone to expand in places like Bangladesh.
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Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank shared the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
Microfinance encourages the poor to save but, unlike the Grameen Bank, BRAC also lends a lot to small companies.
It suggested discussing Grameen-type banking with the Scottish League of Credit Unions and the Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust.
The violence and hardship that Grameen's operations alleviate makes it a worthy winner.
Now, however, Grameen and Yunus find themselves in a legal struggle, which Yunus plans to take to the Supreme Court.
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In 2006 Danone and Grameen Bank started a joint venture in Bangladesh, where Grameen had been operating for 23 years.
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On the face, its business model is similar to Grameen's, operating in Bangladesh, which focuses on lending to poor women.
She was active in developing micro-finance two decades before Muhammad Yunus and Grameen bank shared the Nobel Peace prize for microcredit.
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Grameen transferred the ownership of the Norwegian funds from one Grameen entity, fearing its tax-exempt status might be changed, to another.
ECONOMIST: A microfinance pioneer is under attack in his homeland
His supporters fear that the government plans to remove him from Grameen Bank, the microlender he founded, and take it over.
ECONOMIST: A microfinance pioneer is under attack in his homeland
Mr Yunus's aides say the members of the Grameen family are all independent entities with no legal ties to each other.
Elsewhere, the hounding of Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel laureate and founder of the Grameen Bank who briefly flirted with politics, was vindictive.
The concept was pioneered by Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
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