Improve your image and your bottom line without doing a damn thing for the workers. I have to admit, it's clever.

Wal-Mart to Start Equity Fund to Help Diversify Its Suppliers
By MICHAEL BARBARO

Wal-Mart Stores, which is fighting the nation's largest sex discrimination lawsuit, will set up a $25 million private equity fund to support businesses owned by women and members of minority groups over the next five years, the retailer said yesterday.

The fund will invest in businesses that offer merchandise and services to retailers with the goal of diversifying the industry's suppliers. Of Wal-Mart's 61,000 United States suppliers, 5,200 are owned by women and minority group members, the company said.

Creation of the fund, which will be managed by Aldus Equity Partners, based in Dallas, comes as Wal-Mart wrestles with a class-action lawsuit representing 1.6 million current and former female workers. The lawsuit, filed in 2001, accuses the chain of systematically paying women less than men and offering women fewer chances for promotion.

In July, two black truck drivers filed federal lawsuits against Wal-Mart, arguing that the chain discriminated against them by denying them jobs because of their race. Lawyers in the case are seeking class-action status.

Asked if there was a connection between the lawsuits and the establishment of the fund, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, Linda Blakely, said "absolutely not."

"This is not something that we just started doing," said Ms. Blakely, who added that businesses owned by women and members of minorities now supply the chain with $3 billion worth of goods, up from $2 million in the mid-1990's.