Name: Nigel Kershaw
Business: Big Issue Invest
Role: CEO
Founded: London

Nigel is a leading practitioner and advocate of social enterprises that offer business solutions to social problems. In July 2007 he was nominated as director of the month by the Institute of Directors and in January 2008, he won the enterprise category in Director magazine’s Good Director honours.

He is CEO of Big Issue Invest, which is a specialised provider of finance to social enterprises and was founded by The Big Issue. It is now well established, with over £4million of loans disbursed to a range of exciting social businesses in 2006 and 2007.

The company is about to launch a £10 million acquisition syndicate to buy private companies and back them into existing well-managed social enterprises to help scale-up their growth and impact.

The team is also conducting a feasibility study to add in alternative predictive data, such as rentpayments, to traditional credit scoring models so that as many as 750,000 low-income people can have affordable and regulated creditaway from predatory lenders.

Nigel is chair of The Big Issue,which he joined in 1995. As executive chairman and managing director, he was responsible for the magazine’s publishing operations, as well as developing its new social businesses, both in the UK and theUSA. He has a long history in social enterprise and founded two employee-owned printing and publishing companies in 1973 and 1978.

www.biginvest.co.uk

click here to read Nigel's blog