Exec trades cosmetics for loans

NEW YORK » The former head of Avon is now leading Grameen America, a group that provides small loans to poor female entrepreneurs in the United States.

Andrea Jung was CEO of the beauty products company from 1999 through April 2012 and served as chairwoman through the end of that year. Considered one of the most powerful women in business, she came under fire for failing to stem Avon’s sales declines and left amid an overseas bribery investigation.

Jung joined Grameen America this month, stating her goal of "scaling the organization to solve economic issues for women and their families across the country."

Grameen has given out $140 million in small loans to more than 20,000 women since it was founded by Nobel Peace Prize-winning Muhammad Yunus in 2008, according to the group’s website.

In the 1970s Yunus also founded the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which pioneered small loans for the poor.

AMR investors stand to profit on American Airlines’ new shares

Holding onto shares of AMR Corp. could pay off handsomely for investors.

The value of the stock, which traded for less than a quarter in the low days of the airline’s bankruptcy, is now estimated to reach as much as $28 a share when American Airlines distributes the final shares of its new "AAL" stock to AMR shareholders Tuesday.

Although the merger of American and US Airways closed in December, bringing the former AMR Corp. out of bankruptcy, American’s shareholders had to wait 120 days before they could realize the full value of their shares under a complicated equity distribution formula approved by the bankruptcy court.

American’s old stock dropped as low as 26 cents a share after the company filed for bankruptcy in November 2011. By the time the merger closed, in December 2013, the stock price had reached as high as $13.50.

American’s stock closed Friday at $36.56 a share.

On Wednesday, JPMorgan Chase analyst Jamie Baker estimated that the final value of old AMR shares, which last traded Dec. 6 at $11.39 a share, could be $28.19 a share once the final stock distribution occurs.

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