Accounting News

Andrew Hill

Cartier, the jeweller, has thrown its weight behind a new $100,000 annual award for women entrepreneurs.

The Women’s Initiative Awards will offer each of five winners $20,000 as well as coaching from Cartier itself, McKinsey, the consultant, and Insead, the French business school.

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The awards are a joint project with the Women’s Forum, the Paris-based organisation whose mission is to promote women’s vision for the economy and society.

Formally launching the awards on Friday at the Forum’s annual conference in Deauville, Bernard Fornas, president and chief executive of Cartier, said he expected the winners to “become the leaders of tomorrow”.

Men are still twice as likely to become entrepreneurs as women, according to a 2005 report on women and entrepreneurship by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Babson College and London Business School.

Speaking on Friday at the Forum, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a serial entrepreneur who now heads EL Rothschild, a private equity firm, encouraged women not to be afraid to start their own businesses. She said the financial backing was now available. “Banks want to finance women,” she said.

The Cartier awards will be made to the best business plans from each of five regions – Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America – that meet the criteria of relevance, creativity, sustainability and impact on society. Only projects that are for profit, in their start-up phase or still to be launched, and that are headed by a woman will be eligible.

Regional juries will select 15 finalists. An international panel of judges, including Mr Fornas and Aude Zieseniss de Thuin, founder of the Women’s Forum, will then choose the five winners, with the prizes awarded next October in Deauville. The closing date for submissions is next April 15.