Innocent Until Proven Guilty: U.S. Export-Import Bank

How do you define what is a small (vs. BIG) business?  Is it based on the size of revenues?  Number of employees?  Apparently everyone, including Ex-Im Bank, is struggling with that very same question.  The latest on the trials and tribulations of the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

Ex-Im Misleads Congress and the Public About Helping Small Businesses

But an investigation by the Reuters news agency has found that potentially hundreds of the subsidy recipients categorized as “small businesses” by Ex-Im are actually very large enterprises or units of multinational conglomerates.

Exclusive:  Export-Import Bank admits errors in small biz data - Yahoo News

The U.S. Export-Import Bank has mischaracterized potentially hundreds of large companies and units of multinational conglomerates as small businesses, a flaw in its record keeping that could undermine the export lender's survival strategy.

Export-Import Bank's list of 'small' businesses draws fire from conservatives | TribLIVE

A comparison of about 6,000 businesses characterized by Ex-Im as “small” with information supplied by corporate data collector Dun & Bradstreet, which Ex-Im uses to vet applicants, and other sources turns up about 200 companies that appear to be mislabeled and many more whose classification is uncertain.