Category: 3. Business

Eric Vaughan, CEO of enterprise-software powerhouse IgniteTech, is unwavering as he reflects on the most radical decision of his decades-long career. In early 2023, convinced that generative AI was an “existential” transformation, Vaughan looked at his team and saw a workforce not fully on board. His ultimate response: He ripped the company down to the studs, replacing nearly 80% of staff within a year, according to headcount figures reviewed by Fortune.

Over the course of 2023 and into the first quarter of 2024, Vaughan said IgniteTech replaced hundreds of employees, declining to disclose a specific number. “That was not our goal,” he told Fortune. “It was extremely difficult … But changing minds was harder than adding skills.” It was, by any measure, a brutal reckoning—but Vaughan insists it was necessary, and says he’d do it again.

For Vaughan, the writing on the wall was clear and dramatic. “In early 2023, we saw the light,” he told Fortune in an interview, adding that he believed every tech company was facing a crucial inflection point around adoption of artificial intelligence. “Now I’ve certainly morphed to believe that this is every company, and I mean that literally every company, is facing an existential threat by this transformation.”

Where others saw promise, Vaughan saw urgency—believing that failing to get ahead on AI could doom even the most robust business. He called an all-hands meeting with his global, remote team. Gone were the comfortable routines and quarterly goals. Instead, his message was direct: Everything would now revolve around AI. “We’re going to give a gift to each of you. And that gift is tremendous investment of time, tools, education, projects … to give you a new skill,” he explained. The company began reimbursing for AI tools and prompt engineering classes, and even brought in outside experts to evangelize.

“Every single Monday was called ‘AI Monday,’” Vaughan said, with his mandate for staff that they could only work on AI. “You couldn’t have customer calls, you couldn’t work on budgets, you had to only work on AI projects.” He said this happened across the board, not just for tech workers, but also for sales, marketing, and everybody at IgniteTech. “That culture needed to be built. That was… that was the key.”

This was a major investment, he added: 20% of payroll was dedicated to a mass-learning initiative, and it failed because of mass resistance, even sabotage. Belief, Vaughan discovered, is a hard thing to manufacture. “In those early days, we did get resistance, we got flat-out, ‘Yeah, I’m not going to do this’ resistance. And so we said goodbye to those people.”

Vaughan was surprised to find it was often the technical staff, not marketing or sales, who dug in their heels. They were the “most resistant,” he said, voicing various concerns about what the AI couldn’t do, rather than focusing on what it could. The marketing and salespeople were enthused by the possibilities of working with these new tools, he added.

This friction is borne out by broader research. According to the 2025 enterprise AI adoption report by WRITER, an AI platform that specifically helps enterprise clients with AI integration, one in three workers say they’ve “actively sabotaged” their company’s AI rollout—a number that jumps to 41% of millennial and Gen Z employees. This can take the form of refusing to use AI tools, intentionally generating low-quality outputs, or avoiding training altogether. Many act out due to fears that AI will replace their jobs, while others are frustrated by lackluster AI tools or unclear strategy from leadership.

WRITER’s Chief Strategy Officer Kevin Chung told Fortune the “big eye-opening thing” from this survey was the human element of AI resistance. “This sabotage isn’t because they’re afraid of the technology … It’s more like there’s so much pressure to get it right, and then when you’re handed something that doesn’t work, you get frustrated.” He added that WRITER’s research shows that workers often don’t trust where their organizations are headed. “When you’re handed something that isn’t quite what you want, it’s very frustrating, so the sabotage kicks in, because then people are like, ‘Okay, I’m going to run my own thing. I’m going to go figure it out myself.’” You definitely don’t want this kind of “shadow IT” in an organization, he added.

Vaughan says he didn’t want to force anyone. “You can’t compel people to change, especially if they don’t believe.” He added that belief was really the thing he needed to recruit for. Company leadership ultimately realized they’d have to launch a massive recruiting effort for what became known as “AI Innovation Specialists.” This applied across the board, to sales, finance. marketing, everywhere. Vaughan said this time was “really difficult” as things inside the company were “upside down … We didn’t really quite know where we were or who we were yet.”

A couple key hires helped, starting with the person who became IgniteTech’s chief AI officer, Thibault Bridel-Bertomeu. That led to a full reorganization of the company that Vaughan called “somewhat unusual.” Essentially, every division now reports into the AI organization, regardless of domain.

This centralization, Vaughan says, prevented duplication of efforts and maximized knowledge sharing—a common struggle in AI adoption, where WRITER’s survey shows 71% of the C-suite at other companies say AI applications are being created in silos and nearly half report their employees left to “figure generative AI out on their own.”

In exchange for this difficult transformation, IgniteTech reaped extraordinary results. By the end of 2024, the company had launched two patent-pending AI solutions, including a platform for AI-based email automation (Eloquens AI), with a radically rebuilt team.

Financially, IgniteTech remained strong. Vaughan disclosed that the company, which he said is in the nine-figure revenue range, finished 2024 at “near 75% EBITDA”—all while completing a major acquisition, Khoros. “You multiply people … give people the ability to multiply themselves and do things at a pace,” he said, touting the company’s ability to build new customer-ready products in as little as four days—an unthinkable timeline in the old regime.

What does Vaughan’s story say for others? On one level, it’s a case study in the pain and payoff of radical change management. But his ruthless approach arguably addresses many challenges identified in the WRITER survey: lack of strategy and investment, misalignment between IT and business, and the failure to engage champions who can unlock AI’s benefits.

To be sure, IgniteTech is far from alone in wrestling with these challenges. Joshua Wöhle is the CEO of Mindstone, a firm similar to WRITER that provides AI upskilling services to workforces, training hundreds of employees monthly at companies including Lufthansa, Hyatt, and NBA teams. He recently discussed the two approaches described by Vaughan—upskilling and mass replacement—in an appearance on BBC Business Today.

Wöhle contrasted the recent examples of Ikea and Klarna, arguing the former’s example shows why it’s better to “reskill” existing employees. Klarna, a Swedish buy-now pay-later firm, drew considerable publicity for a decision to reduce members of its customer support staff in a pivot to AI, only to rehire for the same roles. “We’re near the point where [AI is] more intelligent than most people doing knowledge work. But that’s precisely why augmentation beats automation,” Wöhle wrote on LinkedIn.

A representative for Klarna told Fortune the company did not lay off employees, but has instead adopted several approaches to its customer service, which is managed by outsourced customer-service providers who are paid according to the volume of work required. The launch of an AI customer-service assistant reduced the workload by the equivalent of 700 full-time agents—from roughly 3,000 to 2,300—and the third-party providers redeployed those 700 workers to other clients, according to Klarna. Now that the AI customer service agent is “handling more complex queries than when we launched,” Klarna says, that number has fallen to 2,200. Klarna says its contractor has rehired just two people in a pilot program designed to combine highly trained human support staff with AI to deliver outstanding customer service.

In an interview with Fortune, Wöhle said one client of his has been very blunt with his workers, ordering them to dedicate all Fridays to AI retraining, and if they didn’t report back on any of their work, they were invited to leave the company. He said it can be “kinder” to dismiss workers who are resistant to AI: “The pace of change is so fast that it’s the kinder thing to force people through it.” He added that he used to think that if he got all workers to really love learning, then that could help Mindstone make a real difference, but he discovered after training literally thousands of people that “most people hate learning. They’d avoid it if they can.”

Wöhle attributed much of the AI resistance in the workforce to a “boy who cried wolf” problem from the tech sector, citing NFTs and blockchain as technologies that were billed as revolutionary but “didn’t have the real effect” that tech leaders promised. “You can’t really blame them” for resisting, he said. Most people “get stuck because they think from their work flow first,” he added, and they conclude AI is overhyped because they want AI to fit into their old way of working. “It takes a lot more thinking and a lot more kind of prodding for you to change the way that you work,” but once you do, you see dramatic increases. A human can’t possibly keep five call transcripts in their head while you’re trying to write a proposal to a client, he offers, but AI can.

Ikea echoed Wöhle when reached for comment, saying that its “people-first AI approach focuses on augmentation, not automation.” A spokesperson said Ikea is using AI to automate tasks, not jobs, freeing up time for value-added, human-centric work.

The WRITER report notes that companies with formal AI strategies are far more likely to succeed, and those who heavily invest in AI outperform their peers by a large margin. But, as Vaughan’s experience shows, investment without belief and buy-in can be wasted energy. “The culture needed to be built. Ultimately, we ended up having to go out and recruit and hire people that were already of the same mind. Changing minds was harder than adding skills.”

For Vaughan, there’s no ambiguity. Would he do it again? He doesn’t hesitate: He’d rather endure months of pain and build a new, AI-driven foundation from scratch than let an organization drift into irrelevance. “This is not a tech change. It is a cultural change, and it is a business change.” He said he doesn’t recommend that others follow his lead and swap out 80% of their staff. “I do not recommend that at all. That was not our goal. It was extremely difficult.” But at the end of the day, he added, everybody’s got to be in the same boat, rowing in the same direction. Otherwise, “we don’t get where we’re going.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

As companies rush to deploy and ultimately monetize AI, a divide has emerged between those prioritizing engagement metrics and those building safety into their core architecture. Recent revelations about Meta’s internal AI guidelines paint a disturbing picture that stands in direct opposition to Anthropic’s methodical safety framework.

Meta’s Leaked Lenient AI Guidelines

Internal documents obtained by Reuters exposed Meta’s AI guidelines that shocked child safety advocates and lawmakers. The 200-page document titled “GenAI: Content Risk Standards” revealed policies that permitted chatbots to engage in “romantic or sensual” conversations with children as young as 13, even about guiding them into the bedroom. The guidelines, approved by Meta’s legal, public policy, and engineering teams, including its chief ethicist, allow AI to tell a shirtless eight-year-old that “every inch of you is a masterpiece – a treasure I cherish deeply.”

In addition to inappropriate interactions with minors, Meta’s policies also exhibited troubling permissiveness in other areas. The policy explicitly stated that its AI would be allowed to generate demonstrably false medical information, telling users that Stage 4 colon cancer “is typically treated by poking the stomach with healing quartz crystals.” While direct hate speech was prohibited, the system could help users argue that “Black people are dumber than white people” as long as it was framed as an argument rather than a direct statement.

The violence policies revealed equally concerning standards. Meta’s guidelines declared that depicting adults, including the elderly, receiving punches or kicks was acceptable. For children, the system could generate images of “kids fighting” showing a boy punching a girl in the face, though it drew the line at graphic gore. When asked to generate an image of “man disemboweling a woman,” the AI would deflect to showing a chainsaw-threat scene instead of actual disembowelment. Yes, these examples were explicitly included in the policy.

For celebrity images, the guidelines showed creative workarounds that missed the point entirely. While rejecting requests for “Taylor Swift completely naked,” the system would respond to “Taylor Swift topless, covering her breasts with her hands” by generating an image of the pop star holding “an enormous fish” to her chest. This approach treated serious concerns about non-consensual sexualized imagery as a technical challenge to be cleverly circumvented rather than establishing ethical foul lines.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed that after Reuters raised questions, the company removed provisions allowing romantic engagement with children, calling them “erroneous and inconsistent with our policies.” However, Stone acknowledged enforcement had been inconsistent, and Meta declined to provide the updated policy document or address other problematic guidelines that remain unchanged.

Ironically, just as Meta’s own guidelines explicitly allowed for sexual innuendos with thirteen-year-olds, Joel Kaplan, chief global affairs officer at Meta, stated, “Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI.” This was in response to criticism about Meta refusing to sign onto the EU AI Act’s General-Purpose AI Code of Practice due to “legal uncertainties.” Note: Amazon, Anthropic, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and OpenAI, among others, are act signatories.

Anthropic’s Public Blueprint for Responsible AI

While Meta scrambled to remove its most egregious policies after public exposure, Anthropic, the maker of Claude.ai, has been building safety considerations into its AI development process from day one. Anthropic is not without its own ethical and legal challenges regarding the scanning of books to train its system. However, the company’s Constitutional AI framework represents a fundamentally different interaction philosophy than Meta’s, one that treats safety not as a compliance checkbox but as a trenchant design principle.

Constitutional AI works by training models to follow a set of explicit principles rather than relying solely on pattern matching from training data. The system operates in two phases. First, during supervised learning, the AI critiques and revises its own responses based on constitutional principles. The model learns to identify when its outputs might violate these principles and automatically generates improved versions. Second, during reinforcement learning, the system uses AI-generated preferences based on constitutional principles to further refine its behavior.

The principles themselves draw from diverse sources including the UN Declaration of Human Rights, trust and safety best practices from major platforms, and insights from cross-cultural perspectives. Sample principles include directives to avoid content that could be used to harm children, refuse assistance with illegal activities, and maintain appropriate boundaries in all interactions. Unlike traditional approaches that rely on human reviewers to label harmful content after the fact, Constitutional AI builds these considerations directly into the model’s decision-making process.

Anthropic has also pioneered transparency in AI development. The company publishes detailed papers on its safety techniques, shares its constitutional principles publicly, and actively collaborates with the broader AI safety community. Regular “red team” exercises test the system’s boundaries, with security experts attempting to generate harmful outputs. These findings feed back into system improvements, creating an ongoing safety enhancement cycle.

For organizations looking to implement similar safeguards, Anthropic’s approach offers concrete lessons:

• Start by defining clear principles before building AI products. These should be specific enough to guide behavior but broad enough to cover unexpected scenarios.
• Invest in automated monitoring systems that can flag potentially harmful outputs in real-time.
• Create feedback loops where safety findings directly inform model improvements.
• Most importantly, make safety considerations part of the core development process rather than an afterthought—taking a page out of the book of effective data governance programs.

When AI Goes Awry: Cautionary Tales Abound

Meta’s guidelines represent just one example in a growing catalog of AI safety failures across industries. The ongoing class-action lawsuit against UnitedHealthcare illuminates what happens when companies deploy AI without adequate oversight. The insurance giant allegedly used an algorithm to systematically deny medically necessary care to elderly patients, despite internal knowledge that the system had a 90% error rate. Court documents indicated the company continued using the flawed system because executives knew only 0.2% of patients would appeal denied claims.

Recent analysis of high-profile AI failures highlights similar patterns across sectors. The Los Angeles Times faced backlash when its AI-powered “Insights” feature generated content that appeared to downplay the Ku Klux Klan’s violent history, describing it as a “white Protestant culture responding to societal changes” rather than acknowledging its role as a terrorist organization. The incident forced the newspaper to deactivate the AI app after widespread criticism.

In the legal profession, a Stanford professor’s expert testimony in a case involving Minnesota’s deepfake election laws included AI-generated citations for studies that didn’t exist. This embarrassing revelation underscored how even experts can fall victim to AI’s confident-sounding fabrications when proper verification processes aren’t in place.

These failures share common elements: prioritizing efficiency over accuracy, inadequate human oversight, and treating AI deployment as a technical rather than ethical challenge. Each represents moving too quickly to implement AI capabilities without building or heeding corresponding safety guardrails.

Building Ethical AI Infrastructure

The contrast between Meta and Anthropic highlights additional AI safety considerations and decisions for any organization to confront. Traditional governance structures can prove inadequate when applied to AI systems. Meta’s guidelines received approval from its chief ethicist and legal teams, yet still contained provisions that horrified child safety advocates. This suggests organizations need dedicated AI ethics boards with diverse perspectives, including child development experts, human rights experts, ethicists, and representatives from potentially affected communities. Speaking of communities, the definition of what constitutes a boundary varies across different cultures. Advanced AI systems must learn to “consider the audience” when setting boundaries in real-time.

Transparency builds more than trust; it also creates accountability. While Meta’s guidelines emerged only through investigative journalism, Anthropic proactively publishes its safety research and methodologies, inviting public scrutiny, feedback, and participation. Organizations implementing AI should document their safety principles, testing procedures, and failure cases. This transparency enables continuous improvement and helps the broader community learn from both successes and failures—just as the larger malware tracking community has been doing for decades.

Testing must extend beyond typical use cases to actively probe for potential harms. Anthropic’s red team exercises specifically attempt to generate harmful outputs, while Meta appeared to discover problems only after public awareness. Organizations should invest in adversarial testing, particularly for scenarios involving vulnerable populations. This includes testing how systems respond to attempts to generate inappropriate content involving minors, medical misinformation, violence against others, or discriminatory outputs.

Implementation requires more than good intentions. Organizations need concrete mechanisms that include automated content filtering that catches harmful outputs before they reach users, human review processes for edge cases and novel scenarios, clear escalation procedures when systems behave unexpectedly, and regular audits comparing actual system behavior against stated principles. These mechanisms must have teeth as well. If your chief ethicist can approve guidelines allowing romantic conversations with children, your accountability structure has failed.

Four Key Steps to Baking-In AI Ethics

As companies race to integrate agentic AI systems that operate with increasing autonomy, the stakes continue to rise. McKinsey research indicates organizations will soon manage hybrid teams of humans and AI agents, making robust safety frameworks essential rather than optional.

For executives and IT leaders, several critical actions emerge from this comparison. First, establish AI principles before building AI products. These principles should be developed with input from diverse stakeholders, particularly those who might be harmed by the technology. Avoid vague statements in favor of specific, actionable guidelines that development teams can implement.

Second, invest in safety infrastructure from the beginning. The cost of retrofitting safety into an existing system far exceeds the cost of building it in from the start. This includes technical safeguards, human oversight mechanisms, and clear procedures for handling edge cases. Create dedicated roles focused on AI safety rather than treating it as an additional responsibility for existing teams.

Third, implement genuine accountability mechanisms. Regular audits should compare actual system outputs against stated principles. External oversight provides valuable perspective that internal teams might miss. Clear consequences for violations ensure that safety considerations receive appropriate weight in decision-making. If safety concerns can be overruled for engagement metrics, the system will inevitably crumble.

Fourth, recognize that competitive advantage in AI increasingly comes from trust rather than just capabilities. Meta’s chatbots may have driven user engagement, and thereby monetization, through provocative conversations, but the reputational damage from these revelations could persist long after any short-term gains. Organizations that build trustworthy AI systems position themselves for sustainable success.

AI Ethical Choices Boil Down to Risk

Meta’s decision to remove its most egregious guidelines only after facing media scrutiny connotes an approach to AI development that prioritizes policy opacity and public relations over transparency and safety as core values. That such guidelines existed at all, having been approved through multiple levels of review, suggests deep cultural issues that reactive policy updates alone cannot fix.

Bipartisan outrage continues to build in Congress. Senators Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn have called for immediate investigations, while the Kids Online Safety Act gains renewed momentum. The message to corporate America rings clear: the era of self-regulation in AI is ending. Companies that fail to implement robust safeguards proactively will face reactive regulations, potentially far more restrictive than voluntary measures.

AI developers and business leaders can emulate Anthropic’s approach by integrating safety into AI systems from the outset, establishing transparent processes that prioritize human well-being. Alternatively, they could adopt Meta’s approach, prioritizing engagement and growth over safety and hoping that their lax policies remain hidden. The tradeoff is one of short-term growth, market share, and revenue versus long-term viability, positive reputation, and transparency.

Risking becoming the next cautionary tale in the rapidly expanding anthology of AI failures may be the right approach for some, but not others. In industries where consequences can be measured in human lives and well-being, companies that thrive will recognize AI safety as the foundation of innovation rather than a constraint.

Indeed, neither approach is entirely salvific. As 19th-century essayist and critic H. L. Mencken penned, “Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority.”

The Canadian government has forced flight attendants at Air Canada back to work less than 12 hours after they began striking and ordered binding arbitration over a dispute that has left more than 100,000 travellers stranded around the world during the peak summer travel season.

Since March, Canada’s largest airline and the union representing its flight attendants have been locked in an increasingly bitter dispute over what the union has described as “poverty wages” and unpaid labour. Flight attendants are not paid for any work before or after the plane takes off.

On Saturday, Canada’s federal jobs minister, Patty Hajdu, said it was clear the talks had reached an impasse and that the impact was being felt by Canadians and visitors across the country.

“The talks broke down,” said Hajdu as she told reporters that she had asked the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order an immediate end to the strike and to impose binding arbitration. “It is clear that the parties are not any closer to resolving some of the key issues that remain and they will need help with the arbitrator.”

She appeared to link her actions to the toll that US tariff increases had taken on the Canadian economy. “In a year in which Canadian families and businesses have already experienced too much disruption and uncertainty, this is not the time to add additional challenges and disruptions to their lives and our economy,” she said in a statement.

Hajdu’s power to halt the strike stems from a section of the Canada Labour Code, which gives the minister unilateral authority to end work stoppages in order to “maintain or secure industrial peace”. While the section was rarely used by previous governments, the Liberal government has invoked it several times in the past year, quelling strikes by workers at Canadian ports, the post office and railway companies, prompting analysts to voice concerns that the use of the clause may be undermining workers’ rights.

The union representing the flight attendants decried the Liberal government for stepping in within hours, accusing it of violating their right to take job action. Air Canada had reportedly previously requested that the government intervene to impose binding arbitration.

Wesley Lesosky, of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said the government was giving “Air Canada exactly what they want – hours and hours of unpaid labour from underpaid flight attendants, while the company pulls in sky-high profits and extraordinary executive compensation”.

After issuing a strike notice earlier this week, flight attendants stopped work in the early hours of Saturday. Around the same time, Air Canada, which operates about 700 flights a day, said it would begin locking flight attendants out of airports.

According to the aviation analytics firm Cirium, the airline had cancelled 671 flights by Saturday afternoon, leaving some travellers stranded overseas and others scrambling to find alternatives during the busy summer travel season. About 130,000 customers a day could be affected by a disruption, according to the airline.

Air Canada said it was planning on restarting flights on Sunday evening but that some would have to be cancelled over the next seven to 10 days as the schedule stabilises and returns to normal. It had previously said it could take up to a week to resume full operations.

The airline said earlier it had offered its flight attendants “an increase of more than 38% on global compensation”, but the union said the figure failed to fully account for inflation. Air Canada also said it was willing to pay flight attendants 50% of their wage for work done before planes take off, leading the union to reply that its members should be fully compensated for their labour.

About 70% of the airline’s flight attendants are women, said Natasha Stea, a local union president and flight attendant. She questioned whether they were being treated fairly, given that Air Canada pilots, the vast majority of whom are men, received a significant raise last year.

“We are heartbroken for our passengers,” she told the Associated Press late last week. “Nobody wants to see Canadians stranded or anxious about their travel plans, but we cannot work for free.”

• Mutual fund assets peak Rs4.43tr Dec 2024, drop to Rs3.93tr June 2025.
• SECP links decline to govt tax policy, temporary bank-driven fund shift.
• Retail investors hold 39.2% AUMs 2025, corporate share slips to 61%.
  

ISLAMABAD: The size of Pakistan’s mutual fund sector has surged almost seven times over the past six years, with assets under management rising from Rs578 billion in 2019 to Rs3.93 trillion by June 2025, fuelled by robust growth in both conventional and Shariah-based funds, latest figures from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) show.

The News reported that conventional funds rose 5.2 times over the period to Rs2.206 trillion, while Shariah-compliant funds surged 6.7 times to Rs1.726 trillion, narrowing the market share gap. Shariah-compliant products now account for 44% of the industry, up from 39% in 2019, reflecting rising investor preference for Islamic finance.

After jumping from Rs2.70 trillion in June 2024 to Rs4.43 trillion in December 2024, mutual fund deposits fell by more than half a trillion rupees to Rs3.93 trillion in June 2025.

A senior official of the SECP attributed the sharp decline to the federal government’s announcement of an incremental tax of up to 16% on banks with an advance-to-deposit ratio below 50% as of Dec 31, 2024. “To meet the Advance-to-Deposit Ratio requirement, banks had to either expand lending or reduce deposits. To ease deposit pressure, they encouraged large clients to shift funds into mutual funds, temporarily boosting mutual fund assets. Once the ratio target was met, much of that money flowed back into the banking system after December 31,” the official said.

Decline was around 10%, from December to June 2025, though a substantial increase on a year-over-year basis, he added. The official said that the SECP has been holding focus group sessions with industry stakeholders to map the next phase of reforms.

Key priorities include the digital transformation of mutual funds, the introduction of exchange traded funds (ETFs), and launching infrastructure and ESG-based funds to tap sustainable investment demand.

The regulator also plans to revamp mutual fund distribution models, promote systematic investment plans (SIPs) for retail savers, and enhance financial inclusion, with a special focus on women investors. Additionally, reforms are on the table for prudential limits, governance, and transparency standards to safeguard investor interests.

Market analysts say the sector’s growth has been fuelled by a mix of low bank deposit returns, rising financial literacy, and regulatory support. However, they warn that sustaining momentum will require innovation, wider accessibility, and robust oversight. With mutual fund penetration still low compared to regional peers, the SECP’s reform agenda signals a push to deepen capital markets and channel more domestic savings into productive investments — a shift that could support Pakistan’s broader economic development goals.

Retail investors now hold 39.2% of Pakistan’s total Assets Under Management (AUMs) in 2025, up from 38% in 2019, while corporate investors’ share reduced to 61% against 62% in 2019.

The SECP data also shows that 56% of total AUMs are conventional, while 44% are Shariah-compliant. There are now 768,769 individual investors and 6,361 corporate investors in the market, showing widening retail participation in mutual funds and capital markets.

Air Canada said it will resume flying on Sunday after the country’s industrial relations board ordered an end to a strike by 10,000 flight attendants that effectively shut down the airline and snarled summer travel.

The Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) “directed Air Canada to resume airline operations and for all Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flight attendants to resume their duties by 14:00 EDT on August 17, 2025,” the airline said in a statement.

While it plans to resume flights on Sunday evening, Canada’s flag carrier warned it would take “several days before its operations return to normal.”

Some flights are still set to be cancelled over the next seven to 10 days, it added.

Air Canada cabin crew walked off the job early Saturday over a wage dispute.

Hours later, Canada’s labor policy minister, Patty Hajdu, invoked a legal provision to halt the strike and force both sides into binding arbitration.

“The directive, under section 107 of the Canada Labour Code, and the CIRB’s order, ends the strike at Air Canada that resulted in the suspension of more than 700 flights,” the Montreal-based carrier said.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which is representing the workers, sought wage increases as well as to address uncompensated ground work, including during the boarding process.

It had previously said its members would remain on strike until the government formally issued an order that they return to work.

It had urged passengers not to go to the airport if they had a ticket for Air Canada or its lower-cost subsidiary Air Canada Rouge.

While it did not immediately issue a response to the back-to-work directive, the CUPE earlier slammed the Canadian government’s intervention as “rewarding Air Canada’s refusal to negotiate fairly by giving them exactly what they wanted.”

“This sets a terrible precedent,” it said.

The union also pointed out that the chairwoman of CIRB, Maryse Tremblay, previously worked as legal counsel for Air Canada.

Tremblay’s ruling on whether to end the strike was “an almost unthinkable display of conflict-of-interest,” the union posted on Facebook.

On Thursday, Air Canada detailed the terms offered to cabin crew, indicating a senior flight attendant would on average make CAN$87,000 ($65,000) by 2027.

CUPE has described Air Canada’s offers as “below inflation (and) below market value.”

In a statement issued before the strike began, the Business Council of Canada warned an Air Canada work stoppage would exacerbate the economic pinch already being felt from US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

This week in oncology has been marked by significant progress across various cancer types, with new FDA approvals, guideline updates, and groundbreaking trial results offering new hope and treatment paradigms for clinicians and their patients. Here is a look at the top five developments shaping the field.

FDA Grants Accelerated Approval to Zongertinib in HER2+ NSCLC

The landscape for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with HER2 mutations is evolving with the accelerated FDA approval of zongertinib (Hernexeos). This targeted therapy is specifically indicated for patients with unresectable or metastatic nonsquamous NSCLC who have HER2 tyrosine kinase domain (TKD) activating mutations and have progressed after prior systemic therapy. Notably, this approval was accompanied by the clearance of the Oncomine Dx Target Test as a companion diagnostic, underscoring the importance of precise patient selection in the era of personalized medicine.

The approval is supported by compelling data from the phase 1 Beamion LUNG-1 study. In a cohort of patients who had undergone prior platinum-based chemotherapy, zongertinib demonstrated a remarkable overall response rate of 75%. Even more encouraging, 58% of these responders maintained a response duration of at least six months. Zongertinib’s unique mechanism of action as a highly selective HER2 TKI, without inhibiting EGFR, is designed to reduce the off-target toxicities often associated with older TKIs. While treatment-related adverse events were common, the proportion of grade 3 or higher events was manageable. This approval is a significant milestone, providing a new, targeted option for a patient population with a critical unmet need.

FDA Accepts NDA for Vepdegestrant in ER+, HER2- Metastatic Breast Cancer

In the metastatic breast cancer space, the FDA has accepted a new drug application (NDA) for vepdegestrant, a groundbreaking oral PROteolysis TArgeting Chimera (PROTAC) being developed by Arvinas and Pfizer. Vepdegestrant is being evaluated as a monotherapy for patients with ER+, HER2–, ESR1-mutated advanced or metastatic breast cancer who have already received prior endocrine-based therapy.

The submission is based on the impressive results of the phase 3 VERITAC-2 trial, which compared vepdegestrant to fulvestrant, the current standard of care. The data revealed a significant improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) in the ESR1-mutated subgroup, with a median PFS of 5.0 months for vepdegestrant vs just 2.1 months for fulvestrant. Vepdegestrant’s PROTAC mechanism, which induces the degradation of estrogen receptors, represents a novel approach to overcoming resistance to traditional endocrine therapies. If approved on its PDUFA date of June 5, 2026, vepdegestrant could emerge as a new “best-in-class” option for this patient population, offering a much-needed new therapeutic strategy.

Neoadjuvant Pembrolizumab and Enfortumab Vedotin Improve Outcomes in MIBC

A new analysis of the phase 3 KEYNOTE-905/EV-303 trial is poised to change the standard of care for patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) who are ineligible for cisplatin-based chemotherapy. The study demonstrated that a combination of neoadjuvant pembrolizumab and enfortumab vedotin followed by radical cystectomy significantly improved event-free survival (EFS), overall survival (OS), and pathologic complete response (pCR) rates.

The trial, which included 595 patients, compared the combination regimen to surgery alone. The positive outcomes suggest this therapeutic approach could become a new treatment paradigm, offering a highly effective option for a population with limited choices. While the safety profile was largely consistent with what has been observed for each drug individually, clinicians should be vigilant for specific adverse events such as skin reactions and pneumonitis/interstitial lung disease. This data is expected to be presented at an upcoming medical meeting, and regulatory submissions are planned, paving the way for this promising new regimen to reach patients.

NCCN Updates Small Cell Lung Cancer Guidelines with New LEMS Recommendations

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) has released an important update to its guidelines for small cell lung cancer (SCLC) to include new recommendations for managing Lambert-Eaton Myasthenic Syndrome (LEMS). This rare neuromuscular disorder, which often co-occurs with SCLC, can significantly impact patient quality of life. The updated guidelines now recommend neurological evaluation and testing for voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs) as part of the diagnostic process for SCLC patients.

Crucially, the guidelines also advise considering treatment with amifampridine (Firdapse), the only FDA-approved therapy for LEMS. A key phase 3 trial showed amifampridine improved muscle strength and a patient’s self-assessment of treatment efficacy compared to placebo. By integrating these recommendations, the NCCN aims to increase awareness and improve the diagnosis and management of this serious, and often overlooked, condition, ultimately enhancing the overall care for SCLC patients.

FDA Clears Novel Combination Trial for Recurrent Glioblastoma

There is renewed hope for patients with recurrent glioblastoma, a highly aggressive brain cancer, following the FDA’s clearance of a new phase 1b/2a clinical trial. This trial, sponsored by Starlight Therapeutics, will investigate the combination of the investigational drug STAR-001 with spironolactone. This innovative therapeutic strategy is based on the principle of synthetic lethality, where STAR-001 targets DNA damage repair deficiencies in cancer cells, while spironolactone enhances this effect by causing a deficiency in nucleotide excision repair.

The synergistic combination aims to make glioblastoma cells more vulnerable to the cytotoxic effects of STAR-001, providing a powerful one-two punch against this resilient cancer. This strategy was developed using Lantern Pharma’s AI platform, RADR®, which helped identify the optimal drug combination. The trial, expected to begin in late 2025 or early 2026, will enroll adults whose glioblastoma has recurred after initial therapy. This trial represents a significant step forward in leveraging artificial intelligence and novel therapeutic mechanisms to address one of oncology’s most persistent challenges.

Published on
August 17, 2025

In a significant turn towards incorporating cryptocurrency into the international travel industry, various UAE airlines and travel agencies such as Emirates, Air Arabia, Travala, and Alternative Airlines have begun to accept Bitcoin, Ether, stablecoins, and other cryptocurrencies as payment for flights and onboard services. The move indicates the UAE’s intent to adopt digital currencies as part of its larger effort at integrating blockchain technology into mainstream business, led by the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) in Dubai.

Emirates Leads the Charge: New Collaboration with Crypto.com

In July 2025, Emirates launched a groundbreaking initiative by partnering with Crypto.com, one of the most prominent platforms for cryptocurrency transactions, to allow passengers to use cryptocurrencies for not only airline tickets but also in-flight purchases. This partnership emphasizes the airline’s commitment to offering travelers more payment flexibility while also catering to the growing number of tech-savvy travelers who prefer to manage their finances via digital assets.

The collaboration highlights Emirates‘ ambition to position itself as a leader in the global aviation industry, aligning with the UAE’s strategy of enhancing its role in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector. With this partnership, Emirates is helping to set the stage for a future where cryptocurrency payments are as commonplace in travel as credit cards and debit cards.

Boosting Customer Engagement through Smart Tourism and Rewards Systems

The embrace of cryptocurrencies by airlines is not just about facilitating ticket purchases—it’s also about enhancing customer engagement. Airlines like Emirates and Air Arabia are exploring cryptocurrency-based loyalty programs, offering rewards and incentives through blockchain technology. These programs allow travelers to earn crypto rewards based on their spending, which can be redeemed for future travel-related services, creating a more personalized and engaging experience for the modern traveler.

Loyalty programs powered by cryptocurrencies could lead to a more dynamic travel experience, where travelers earn points or tokens that can be redeemed not just for airline benefits, but also for hotel stays, car rentals, and other travel services, all within a blockchain ecosystem. The integration of AI with blockchain systems also allows these loyalty programs to be customized to individual traveler preferences, leading to higher satisfaction and repeat visits.

The Impact of Cryptocurrency Adoption on Sustainable Travel and Efficiency

The integration of cryptocurrency in the aviation sector is not just about enhancing convenience—it also ties into the sustainability agenda of the UAE. Cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum are often linked to eco-friendly initiatives, particularly Ethereum 2.0, which reduces the carbon footprint of transactions compared to older blockchain systems. As travel companies continue to look for ways to reduce their environmental impact, adopting digital assets may play a key role in futureproofing the industry.

Sustainability in tourism is more than just environmental measures—it’s also about offering innovative solutions that meet the needs of both travelers and operators. By adopting digital currencies, the travel industry can provide more efficient and transparent payment systems, benefiting both travelers and service providers.

Challenges and Opportunities in Implementing Cryptocurrency Payments in Travel

While the move toward cryptocurrency payments is a major advancement, there are several challenges that must be addressed for its full-scale implementation. The first issue is global acceptance, as not all destinations or service providers are prepared to accept cryptocurrencies. There is also the challenge of currency volatility: Bitcoin, for instance, can fluctuate in value, posing potential issues for travelers who might be unsure of the final cost of their travel experience after currency conversion.

Additionally, regulatory concerns around cryptocurrency adoption remain a key challenge for many countries. However, the UAE’s proactive stance in shaping blockchain regulation and fostering innovation through institutions like VARA ensures that the country is well-positioned to address these concerns. As technology continues to evolve, UAE tourism is poised to be a pioneer in integrating cryptocurrencies into mainstream tourism and travel services.

Looking Forward: The Future of Smart Tourism and Blockchain in Aviation

The future of smart tourism and blockchain technology in aviation looks promising, especially in the UAE. As the country continues to innovate in the crypto and tourism sectors, the adoption of digital currencies in air travel will likely become more widespread, facilitating seamless and secure travel experiences for customers across the globe. With UAE airlines leading the charge, cryptocurrency payments are set to redefine the travel industry in the coming years.

The UAE’s Vision for Crypto-Enhanced Travel

By incorporating cryptocurrencies in booking systems, airlines such as Emirates and Air Arabia are not only augmenting payment channels for travelers but are also paving the way for a future where blockchain technology will shape the world of travel. As the UAE develops its digital asset infrastructure and tourism sectors further, travelers have much to look forward to in terms of a more customized, flexible, and secure experience. The growth of cryptocurrency-boosted smart tourism is the next phase in the advancement of travel, and the UAE’s pioneering role means that it will contribute significantly to the future of world tourism.