Category: 3. Business

Gold prices in Pakistan declined on Thursday, in line with the losses in the international market.

In the local market, the price of gold per tola dropped by Rs. 600 to reach Rs. 466,162. Similarly, 10-gram gold was sold at Rs. 399,658, down Rs. 515, according to rates shared by the All-Pakistan Gems and Jewellers Sarafa Association (APGJSA).

On Wednesday, gold had decreased by Rs. 1,200, closing at Rs. 466,762 per tola.

The international price of gold also slipped by $6, reaching $ 4,438 per ounce, with a $ 20 premium.

Meanwhile, silver prices also fell, dropping Rs. 236 to close at Rs. 8,125 per tola.

Tom Goossens, Partner at CVC DIF, commented: “iPark is a high-quality, essential and highly diversified infrastructure platform with a strong market position and clear growth potential. Off-street parking plays a vital role in urban mobility and iPark is well-positioned to further strengthen its leadership in this segment. Its diversified portfolio, long-term contracts and experienced management team make it an excellent fit for CVC DIF’s investment strategy. We look forward to partnering with the team to support the company’s continued growth and long-term value creation.”
 
Juan Manuel Mogarra, Founder and CEO of iPark, added: “CVC DIF is a highly experienced infrastructure investor with a deep understanding of long-term, essential assets. Their support will enable iPark to accelerate its growth strategy while continuing to deliver high-quality services to cities, partners and customers across Spain and Portugal. We are excited to begin this next chapter together.”

Paul Best, Senior Managing Director and Head of European Private Equity at Elliott Investment Management, said: “This transaction is a reflection of iPark’s market-leading position and potential for further growth. We are proud to have supported iPark as it expanded and diversified its portfolio and scaled its platform across Iberia. We wish the iPark and CVC DIF teams all the best as they pursue the next phase of growth for the company.”

The transaction is expected to close in 2026, subject to customary regulatory approvals.

DC Advisory and Eversheds acted as financial and legal advisers to Elliott Investment Management on the transaction, while RBC Capital Markets and Uría & Menéndez acted as financial and legal advisers to CVC DIF, respectively.

TOKYO/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Oil prices rose on Thursday after two days of declines, as a larger-than-expected draw in US crude inventories provided some impetus for investors to buy futures while they monitor developments in Venezuela.

Brent crude futures climbed 29 cents, or 0.48%, to $60.25 a barrel at 0718 GMT, while US West Texas Intermediate crude was at $56.25 a barrel, up 26 cents, or 0.46%.

Both benchmarks fell more than 1% for a second day on Wednesday with market participants expecting ample global supply this year, including analysts at Morgan Stanley, who estimate a surplus of as much as 3 million barrels per day in the first half of 2026.

The declines led some traders to take an opportunity to buy futures on Thursday, said Mitsuru Muraishi, an analyst at Fujitomi Securities.

“Pullback buying has nudged prices slightly higher, but persistent oversupply concerns are capping upside momentum. While markets are watching developments in Venezuela, the downward trend is likely to continue for now,” he said, forecasting that WTI will likely fall below $54.

US crude stocks dropped by 3.8 million barrels to 419.1 million barrels in the week ended January 2, the Energy Information Administration said, compared with analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a 447,000-barrel rise.

The US seized two Venezuela-linked oil tankers in the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday, one sailing under Russia’s flag, as part of President Donald Trump’s aggressive push to dictate oil flows in the Americas and force Venezuela’s socialist government to become an ally.

On Tuesday, Washington announced a deal with Caracas to get access to up to $2 billion worth of Venezuelan crude. Venezuela will be “turning over” between 30 million and 50 million barrels of “sanctioned oil” to the US, Trump wrote in a social media post on Tuesday.

This would provide a release valve for Venezuelan oil flows, which have been slowed because of a US blockade on sanctioned tankers leaving and entering the country. Directing this oil to the US may reduce the need for Venezuela to cut output because of storage constraints, ING analysts said in a note.

The deal initially could require the rerouting of cargoes that were bound for China, sources told Reuters.

Chinese independent refiners that consume much of the country’s Venezuelan imports could switch to Iranian oil to make up the shortfall.

Trump and his advisers are planning an initiative to dominate the Venezuelan oil industry for years to come, and the president told aides he believes his efforts could help lower oil prices to $50 a barrel, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

A plan under consideration includes the US exerting some control over Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA, including acquiring and marketing the bulk of the company’s oil production, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

• The EBRD is providing a loan of EGP 350 million to Ridgewood for Water Desalination, a Hassan Allam Utilities company, in Egypt
• Financing will support construction of new desalination plants and upgrades to existing facilities along the Red Sea and Mediterranean coasts
• Investment to strengthen water security, boost efficiency and support key tourism and industry sectors

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is extending a senior loan of up to EGP 350 million (€6.4 million) to Ridgewood for Water Desalination (RWD), a Hassan Allam Utilities company, to support Egypt’s water security goals through sustainable infrastructure development.

The financing to RWD will fund the construction of new small-scale desalination plants and upgrade of existing facilities along Egypt’s Red Sea and Mediterranean coasts.

These new facilities will help RWD to deliver a reliable water supply to key sectors of Egypt’s economy, such as tourism and industry, which currently lack access to municipal water owing to the country’s regulatory regime. The investment will also improve operational and energy efficiency, while supporting the company’s growth and diversification.

Egypt faces significant water scarcity, namely an annual deficit of around 7 billion cubic metres, with the Nile River accounting for 97 per cent of its freshwater resources. Population growth, climate change and regional pressures have intensified the need for a sustainable water supply.

Expanding desalination capacity, through public-private partnerships and private investment, will help to meet this need and enable the use of renewable energy, ensuring resilience and sustainability.

The upgraded central water stations and new standalone plants are expected to add a desalination capacity of approximately 10,000 to 15,000 cubic metres a day.

Ridgewood for Water Desalination is an Egypt-based company, incorporated in 1999, that provides desalinated water to private-sector clients in the coastal areas of Egypt.

Egypt is a founding member of the EBRD. Since the start of the Bank’s operations in the country in 2012, the EBRD has invested almost €13.9 billion in 209 projects across the economy.

NVIDIA has confirmed at CES 2026 that its next-generation Rubin AI computing platform is already in full production. This announcement has prompted a decisive, almost panicked shift among Bitcoin mining firms toward AI data-center infrastructure services. This movement marks more than just a structural change in the economic model for miners; it is a high-stakes survival pivot as escalating AI compute demand radically alters competitive dynamics.

According to NVIDIA executives speaking in Las Vegas, the Rubin platform integrates advanced GPUs and CPUs designed for the most demanding next-generation AI workloads, delivering roughly five times the performance of previous systems while operating with greater efficiency. NVIDIA’s roadmap positions Rubin systems for broad deployment through cloud partners later in 2026, enabling customers to construct large-scale AI clusters by linking servers into pods containing more than 1,000 chips.

Institutional partners including major cloud providers and AI service companies such as Oracle, Microsoft, and CoreWeave are expected to be early adopters, signaling absolute confidence in Rubin’s market readiness.

While the business logic for miners to switch to AI seems sound, the operational reality is brutal. The article’s previous suggestion that miners must simply “reallocate hardware capacity” drastically understates the technical challenge.

A typical Bitcoin mining facility is often little more than a ventilated warehouse, designed for interruptible power and low redundancy (Tier 0 or Tier 1 data center standards). If power fails, ASICs simply reboot and resume hashing.

An AI training cluster built on Rubin architecture requires hospital-grade reliability: Tier 3 or Tier 4 standards guaranteeing 99.999% uptime. A single power flicker during a weeks-long LLM training run can ruin the entire process, costing millions.

The financial implications of this transition are severe. Reports indicate that equipping a 100-megawatt data-center site with advanced Rubin GPUs requires billions in capital expenditure.

For Bitcoin miners, usually capital-constrained and reliant on volatile crypto markets, securing this financing is a “bet-the-company” moment. They are no longer just competing for hash rate; they are competing for expensive capital against tech giants.

To fund the required NVIDIA hardware deposits and infrastructure overhauls, many miners face difficult choices: accepting significant shareholder dilution through equity offerings, taking on substantial high-interest debt loads, or liquidating their Bitcoin treasuries, potentially at suboptimal market timing. They are front-loading massive CAPEX risk before enterprise AI contracts are even secured.

Large publicly traded mining companies like Marathon Holdings and Bitdeer are attempting this strategic repositioning, exploring partnerships or total facility conversions. Firms like BitFuFu are trying to leverage existing infrastructure to attract enterprise clients requiring rack space.

However, the infrastructure chasm will likely decimate smaller miners or operations lacking long-term, stable power contracts and deep data-center expertise. As resource constraints tighten under the pressure of AI demand, these firms face forced consolidation or market exit.

Pharma services investments have long benefited from consistent demand, propelled in large part by the pharma industry’s reliance on specialized contract research organizations (CROs), contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs/CMOs), and outsourced commercialization services to provide efficiency, flexibility, and specialized expertise. These fundamentals have supported private equity (PE) deal activity and performance even through cycles of market choppiness. The sector’s resilience was evident in 2022 and 2023: While overall healthcare PE activity softened during this period, pharma services transaction value and deal volume remained steady (see Figure 1).

Pharma services investment growth has slowed

However, the momentum of 2022 and 2023 has moderated, as pharma services volume has declined at a roughly 11% compound annual growth rate from its peak in 2023, while the rest of healthcare PE has seen volume increase at an 11% CAGR in the same period. This moderation reflects a combination of headwinds facing the sector, including decreased biotech funding and fewer clinical trial starts, policy and trade developments that raise uncertainty, pricing pressures on pharma companies, and valuation gaps between buyers and sellers.

In the US, venture capital for biotech and pharma companies has moderated to pre-2021 levels, reflecting a normalization following the highs of 2020 and 2021 (see Figure 2). Additionally, global clinical trial starts, particularly in early-stage and drug discovery programs, have followed a similar trend, returning gradually to pre-pandemic levels and tempering demand for pharma services.

Meanwhile, policy and trade developments—think US tariffs, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the BIOSECURE Act, vaccine policy, and most-favored-nation drug pricing reform—have heightened uncertainty around global pharma supply chains and pricing frameworks. In response, pharma services transactions have targeted areas more insulated from policy shocks, such as CRO/site networks, manufacturing, and businesses with limited exposure selling into US markets.

Large pharma companies also face constrained budgets as macro uncertainty—amplified by pricing pressures, upcoming loss of exclusivity cycles, and Inflation Reduction Act pressures in the US—has hurt financial performance. In turn, these constraints have limited investment in nonessential outsourced services, affecting the growth performance of pharma services vendors broadly (see Figure 3).

Finally, a gap persists between seller and buyer valuation expectations, as most assets purchased during the peak years of multiples between 2021 and 2022 remain in fund portfolios. Although average transaction multiples have declined since then, they are still above pre-pandemic levels. Combined with broader end-market softness, this contributed to a decline in sponsor-to-sponsor transactions, which was especially evident in 2023, although sponsor-to-sponsor activity rebounded in 2024 and 2025 (see Figure 4).

The year 2025 was the largest on record for pharma services on a value basis. This was led by Bain Capital, Kohlberg, Mubadala, and Partners Group’s investment in PCI Pharma Services, a CDMO deal that accounted for more than one-third of the year’s value. Two other important North American transactions were THL Partners’ acquisition of Headlands Research, a KKR-owned clinical trial site network, and BayPine’s acquisition of CenExel Clinical Research, another clinical trial site network, from Webster Equity Partners. These three North American deals reflect the ongoing appetite for large-scale, high-quality service platforms.

In Europe, investors have targeted players with strengths in niche categories. Renaissance Partners and Aurora Growth Capital acquired Genetic, a dossier developer, from CVC Capital Partners, while EQT acquired Adalvo, another dossier developer, from Aztiq. And in Asia-Pacific, Temasek and GIC’s investment in Novotech, a CRO, alongside existing investor TPG, was a highlight in an otherwise slower year for pharma services activity in the region.

Further, many large-scale exits underscore continued strategic interest in high-quality pharma services businesses, exemplified by Thermo Fisher Scientific’s acquisition of Clario Holdings from a shareholder group led by Nordic Capital and Astorg.

Investment strategies for a shifting environment 

Pharma services investors are making use of several approaches to adjust to current headwinds:

• A barbell approach targeting scale and potential. First, investors are emphasizing premium assets offering scale and clear differentiation. Second, investors seek under-optimized or subscale platforms where operational improvement can unlock meaningful growth.
• A focus on business models and markets relatively insulated from volatility. In a reversal of a trend seen in the late 2010s, investors are scanning for companies with greater customer exposure to large pharma sponsors rather than early-stage biotech. Another desirable trait is strong revenue visibility, as with long-duration programs. US-based infrastructure deals resistant to policy change or with limited cross-border exposure may also look attractive. And finally, buyers are eyeing carve-outs and public-to-private transactions, concentrating on assets that could benefit from improved operational execution.
• A structured playbook to pressure-test deal assumptions and develop value-creation plans. Leading investors are developing methodical scenarios to test risk limits; build conviction in value-creation levers across top-line growth, AI-driven operational efficiency, and strategic mergers and acquisitions; and secure investment committee approval even amid macro and policy shifts.

Pharma services remains exposed to secular tailwinds that remain attractive over the long term, and leading investors have continued to find strong opportunities despite recent underlying challenges. As market conditions evolve, a persistent and disciplined approach will continue to drive sustained returns.