Some people who are considering starting a new savings habit or building on an existing one as the new tax year approaches in April may be able to get a clearer idea of their savings goals by grouping them into separate “pots”, according to an investments expert.
Lucy Smith, an investment manger at Killik & Co, said that a “helpful” way to consider structuring savings can be to consider building an emergency pot of cash that can be accessed easily if needed.
Some people may want to aim to build up at least three months’ worth of spending in it, depending on their own circumstances and what they feel comfortable with, she said.
A “planned spend” fund could be a second pot, with money put by for foreseeable goals in the next few years, such as a home purchase, a big holiday or any other life expense.
Longer-term “lifetime” savings that will not be needed for around five years or more could be put into a third pot, Ms Smith suggested.
She said: “This is your pot of money where investing can play a key role as you can benefit from compounding over time since it is not money that you will need over the next few years.”
Ms Smith also said a consistent approach can help with building a savings habit.
She said: “One of the simplest ‘set and forget’ behaviours is using your Isa allowance regularly.”
Some savers might feel comfortable gradually moving from a cash Isa towards a stocks and shares Isa over time, she said.
Investments may potentially grow more strongly than savings held in cash over time. But the value of stocks and shares can go down as well as up, so people may want to consider the risk level they feel comfortable with.
Ms Smith said of the potential for funds to fall in value: “It’s worth considering whether this is something that would keep you up at night or if you would see it as a buying opportunity – and what you’d do if markets fell further.”
Staying diversified when investing and avoiding “putting all your eggs in one basket”, may be a useful goal, she said.
Ms Smith added that some people may want to get financial advice.
The Government-backed MoneyHelper website also has tips and tools to help people build savings.
Ms Smith said: “The type of investment habit you build can also be adapted by life stages, such as buying a home, starting a family or approaching retirement.”
She said of building wealth: “It’s about developing good habits over time.”
Samsung Electronics today announced the continued expansion of Galaxy AI, reinforcing its vision for a rich, open and integrated multi-agent ecosystem. Built around Samsung’s vision of AI that reduces effort and steps across everyday tasks, Galaxy AI is designed to help users get things done more naturally with greater choice, flexibility and control.
Recent insights1 show that people are increasingly using multiple AI agents depending on the task as AI becomes more embedded in daily routines. Nearly 8 in 10 users now rely on more than two types of AI agents. Reflecting this shift, Samsung is evolving Galaxy AI2 to support a choice of integrated agents, enabling users to choose the experiences that best fit their needs, preferences and routines.
Galaxy AI was built to bring meaningful AI directly into the operating system through deep, framework-level connections across the device. Rather than operating within individual apps, Galaxy AI works at the system level by understanding the user’s context to support more natural interactions.
This approach reduces the need to switch between apps or repeat commands, allowing Galaxy AI to work in the background. It also enables Samsung to curate experiences from supporting services, such as Perplexity, while ensuring everything feels seamlessly integrated within the Galaxy environment.
“We’ve been committed to building an open and inclusive integrated AI ecosystem that gives users more choice, flexibility and control to get complex tasks done quickly and easily,” said Won-Joon Choi, President, Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Head of the R&D Office, Mobile eXperience (MX) Business at Samsung Electronics. “Galaxy AI acts as an orchestrator, bringing together different forms of AI into a single, natural, cohesive experience.”
As part of this multi-agent expansion, Samsung will introduce Perplexity as an additional AI agent on upcoming flagship Galaxy devices. Users will be able to access Perplexity through a dedicated voice wake phrase, “Hey Plex,” or via quick-access controls such as pressing and holding the side button, making contextual assistance easy to reach when needed. Deeply embedded across select Samsung apps — including Samsung Notes, Clock, Gallery, Reminder and Calendar, as well as select third-party apps — Perplexity’s AI agent enables smoother, multi-step workflows, allowing users to move seamlessly between tasks without manually managing individual apps. This system-level approach offers Galaxy users a richer and more flexible AI experience across the device.
As Samsung continues to expand its inclusive AI ecosystem, collaborating with trusted partners — the company remains focused on enabling experiences that are easy to use and available to all. Additional details about supported devices and experiences will be announced soon.
President Donald Trump (L), and JP Morgan CEO, Jamie Dimon.
Reuters
JPMorgan Chase acknowledged for the first time that it closed the bank accounts of President Donald Trump and several of his businesses in the political and legal aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol, the latest development in a legal saga over the controversial practice of “debanking.”
The acknowledgment came in a court filing submitted this week in Trump’s lawsuit against the bank and its leader, Jamie Dimon. The president sued for $5 billion, alleging that his accounts were closed for political reasons, disrupting his business operations.
“In February 2021, JPMorgan informed Plaintiffs that certain accounts maintained with JPMorgan’s CB and PB would be closed,” JPMorgan’s former chief administrative officer Dan Wilkening wrote in the court filing. The “PB” and “CB” stands for JPMorgan’s private bank and commercial bank.
Until now, JPMorgan has never admitted it closed the president’s accounts, and would only speak hypothetically about when the bank closes accounts and its reasons for closing accounts.
Emails and text messages to a spokesman for the bank were not returned.
Trump originally sued JPMorgan in Florida state court, where Trump’s primary residence is now located. JPMorgan Chase is looking to have the case moved to New York, which is where the bank accounts were located and where Trump kept much of his business operations until recently.
Trump accuses the bank of trade libel and accuses Dimon himself of violating Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
In the original lawsuit, Trump alleges he tried to raise the issue personally with Dimon after the bank started to close his accounts, and that Dimon assured Trump he would figure out what was happening. The lawsuit alleges Dimon failed to follow up with Trump.
Further, Trump’s lawyers allege that JPMorgan placed the president and his companies on a reputational “blacklist” that both JPMorgan and other banks use to keep clients from opening accounts with them in the future.
JPMorgan has previously said it believes the suit has no merit.
Debanking occurs when a bank closes the accounts of a customer or refuses to do business with a customer in the form of loans or other services. Once a relatively obscure issue in finance, debanking has become a politically charged issue in recent years, with conservative politicians arguing that banks have discriminated against them and their affiliated interests.
“In a devastating concession that proves President Trump’s entire claim, JPMorgan Chase admitted to unlawfully and intentionally de-banking President Trump, his family, and his businesses, causing overwhelming financial harm,” the president’s lawyers said in a statement. “President Trump is standing up for all those wrongly debanked by JPMorgan Chase and its cohorts, and will see this case to a just and proper conclusion.”
Debanking first became a national issue when conservatives accused the Obama administration of pressuring banks to stop extending services to gun stores and payday lenders under “Operation Choke Point.”
Trump and other conservative figures have alleged that banks cut them off from their accounts under the umbrella term of “reputational risk” after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Since Trump came back into office, the president’s banking regulators have moved to stop any banks from using “reputational risk” as a reason for denying service to customers.
This is not the first lawsuit Trump has filed against a big bank, alleging that he was debanked. The Trump Organization sued credit card giant Capital One in March 2025 for similar reasons and allegations. The case is ongoing.
The Financial Stability Board (FSB) Regional Consultative Group for Sub-Saharan Africa (RCG SSA) met on 20-21 February in Zanzibar, hosted by the Bank of Tanzania. The meeting brought together senior officials from central banks, financial authorities, and regulatory bodies in the region to discuss key financial stability topics.
The meeting, co-chaired by Lesetja Kganyago, Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, and Denny Kalyalya, Governor of the Bank of Zambia, covered a range of topics, including global and regional financial vulnerabilities, non-bank financial intermediation (NBFI), the impact of debt and foreign exchange market strains on financial stability, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in finance. Members also discussed the FSB’s 2026 work programme.
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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Two partners at Wachtell Lipton, the New York-based corporate law powerhouse, have left for Latham & Watkins as a war for talent intensifies in a busy market stoked by the Trump administration.
Mark Stagliano, a mergers and acquisitions specialist, and Emily Johnson, a debt financing expert, are joining Latham as partners in the New York office, the firm said in a statement on Saturday.
The duo join two other Wachtell partners who have left for Latham in the past year, John Sobolewski and Zachary Podolsky. Latham confirmed the hires after the FT reported that an announcement was imminent.
Latham, whose roots are in Los Angeles but which has become a global player, has been aggressively hiring lawyers in both traditional M&A as well as capital markets and restructuring in an effort to catch up to Kirkland & Ellis, the highest grossing law firm in the world by revenue. Latham is ranked second.
This week, David Nemecek, a Kirkland veteran widely regarded as the leading US debt financing lawyer, announced he would be leaving the firm to join Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Simpson had hired Allison Preiss, an M&A partner from Wachtell, this year
Marc Jaffe, Latham’s New York managing partner, said in a statement that the former Wachtell duo’s “range of skills and sought-after expertise significantly expands our already strong and growing platform and the best-in-class counsel we provide to our clients”.
Wachtell, known for its modest size of only a few hundred lawyers and high pay, rarely suffers high-level defections. However, in recent years, a handful of partners have left in an active transfer market where top recruits can get annual guaranteed pay greater than $20mn per year.
Wachtell is one of the last firms to utilise a “lockstep” system where partners are paid based on their tenure, though its actual remuneration is well ahead of even other top New York “white shoe” firms.
Last year, Wachtell had a banner year surfing a boom in megadeals to advise on more than $600bn of transactions in the US, close to the amount of the far larger Kirkland and Latham, according to LSEG data.
Wachtell is advising Warner Bros Discovery on its high-profile sale, over which Netflix and Paramount are still scrapping. It also advised Norfolk Southern on its $85bn sale to railroad behemoth Union Pacific and video game maker Electronic Arts on its $55bn sale to a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
Stagliano advised T-Mobile on its $150bn merger with Sprint and the $11bn sale of medical device maker Hill-Rom to Baxter International. Johnson has designed multibillion-dollar M&A financing packages for the likes of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Diamondback Energy.
Wachtell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Caroline’s sultry and soulful eyes are hooded and heavy-lashed.
“She’s straight out of central,” Paul Martin whispers, gazing at his star performer with admiration.
Martin is not speaking of central casting – the camel farmer is referring to the Central Desert region of Australia, where at least half a million of Caroline’s kin roam wild.
Now far from feral, Caroline quietly chews cud as suction cups on her teats gurgle away, hoses connected to 8-litre glass bottles filling up with pure white milk.
Behind Caroline is Mildred, the second in a line of 10 in this open-air dairy shed, an hour’s drive from the metropolis of Brisbane and thousands of kilometres from Australia’s arid heart. Instead of red dunes and vast spinifex plains, these camels are surrounded by lush pasture and a horizon of jagged and wooded peaks.
Unlike cows, camels can ‘hold their milk’– meaning farmers like Martin have to coax, not coerce them into their new roles in the dairy. Photograph: Jamila Filippone/The Guardian
After a decade of supplying the domestic camel milk market from this 130 hectare (320 acre) farm in south-east Queensland’s Scenic Rim – one of the first commercial camel dairies in Australia – Martin wants to start supplying the stuff to the United States. He hopes to export 60,000 litres this year – the first shipment in what he believes could one day become a major new commodity for a country that, it was once said, was built off the sheep’s back and is now among the world’s biggest beef exporters.
And camels like Caroline could hold the key to farms such as Martin’s in building that market. Because she is producing more than double the milk of the average wild-caught camel, Caroline’s bloodline could help build more productive herds in decades to come.
“This is where the cow dairies started 200 years ago,” Martin says of the genetic selection. “People might look back at this in 20 years’ time, when all the camels are doing 8 litres [of volume].”
Unlike cows, however, camels can “hold their milk”, he says – or refuse to release it. So like all true divas, that means camels like Caroline have to be coaxed, not coerced into their new roles in the dairy. Instead of pulling at nose rings and shouting to train these big wild-caught beasts, Martin and his milkers spend a lot of time thinking about camel psychology. He talks of endorphin release, reward feeding, herd structure and keeping calves close by the milking shed.
‘They could sit on your lap if they weren’t so heavy’ … camels at Paul Martin’s farm in Queensland’s Scenic Rim. Photograph: Jamila Filippone/The GuardianCamel milk is more similar to human breastmilk than cow milk – it lacks the protein beta-lactoglobulin, the major allergen in traditional dairy. Photograph: Jamila Filippone/The Guardian
“Once you do that with these animals, they’re like a grass-eating labrador,” Martin says. “They could sit on your lap … if they weren’t so heavy”.
Exporting any milk across the Pacific Ocean, let alone one so niche to the western diet, might seem like wishful thinking. But Martin takes a glass-half-full approach – and Australia, he argues, is uniquely positioned to build a new industry.
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Camel milk, he says, is naturally homogenised, giving it a unique ability to freeze, thaw and reconstitute well, meaning it can be shipped in bulk. The milk is more similar to that of humans than cows – it lacks the protein beta-lactoglobulin, the major allergen in cow’s milk.
For this reason, people with allergies and a range of conditions from diabetes to eczema were among the early non-traditional drinkers of camel milk. This protein profile has also seen it marketed as a “superfood”, leading to an interest from people exploring wellness diets and gut health.
Camel milk’s unique properties has seen it marketed as a ‘superfood’. Photograph: Jamila Filippone/The Guardian
But camel dairies are not only supplying emerging customer bases, but ancient ones. Camel milk has been a staple in east African and Arab cultures for millennia – and many among those migrant communities have not lost their taste for it.
“We’ve had the same sort of broadacre approach to food as the US, so our health issues are pretty similar,” Martin says. “They have the same dynamics of Somali and Arab communities as well – but they just have a lot more people”.
What Australia has that the US does not, though, is a lot of feral camels.
“That’s where Australia has a unique advantage: we have the massive nucleus of a herd there,” he says. “If we don’t cull them all, that is.”
A government report into a feral camel cull program recommended the camel industry reduce its reliance on feral harvest and build captive herds. Photograph: Jamila Filippone/The Guardian
Culling, however, was exactly what the Australian government undertook on a mass scale between 2010 and 2013, during which the population of camels halved to about 300,000.
Dr Carol Booth, policy director at the Invasive Species Council, says culling is the only realistic way to control these feral animals which “inflict enormous damage” to desert ecosystems, Indigenous cultural sites, remote communities and pastoral properties.
Feral camels, she says, befoul precious desert waterholes, devour and trample huge amounts of vegetation, destabilise dunes and cause erosion and outcompete native wildlife.
“People keep coming up with these ideas, which sound great from a commonsense perspective,” Booth says.
“But if the claim is that commercial use [of camels] will help solve [those problems], I would say: that’s biological bunkum.”
The visitor centre at Martin’s farm serves camel milk cappuccinos and camel pies, and sells everything from camel vodka to sausages. Photograph: Jamila Filippone/The Guardian
Just preventing the feral camel population from growing would require a harvest of about 40,000 camels a year, she says, a muster which would be commercially impossible across the 3.3m sq km swathe of remote Australia over which camels roam.
Feral camel management, she says, should instead be based on “biology and a realistic assessment on what is feasible”.
Such an assessment was done in a government review of that three-year cull, which found the cost of and logistics of mustering in swathes of remote Australia “prohibitive”.
But the Australian feral camel management project’s final report also found a “strong preference” among traditional owners for population control via commercial use. And commercial use of camels, it found, could “contribute” to feral camel control in “targeted areas”.
Ultimately, the report recommended the camel industry reduce its reliance on feral harvest and build captive herds.
One of those captive herds holds a special place in the heart of Faysel Ahmed Selat, president of the Queensland African Communities Council.
Ahmed Selat was born in Somalia to a family that owned and revered camels.
There, people drink camel milk daily, he says, drinking milk fresh from the animal and using it as a medicine. Somalis ferment the milk and use it in traditional dishes like ugali; camels are eaten and ridden.
But to Somalis, camels are more than a source of protein and transport. The camel, Ahmed Selat says, is a symbol of “[Somali] culture, its history, its survival and its resilience”.
“Our people went through a lot of hard times, as you can see – there’s so many Somali refugees across the world,” he says.
“The camel is a very tough animal, and I believe we learned a lot from the camel.
“Somali culture and camels are inseparable.”
Martin believes Australia is uniquely positioned to build a new camel-dairy industry, due to an abundance of feral camels. Photograph: Jamila Filippone/The Guardian
Ahmed Selat fled Somalia at the age of seven and after years in refugee camps, settled in Brisbane’s southern suburbs. Now he visits Martin’s farm every few weeks with friends to stock up on milk and spend time with the camels.
“It really makes me feel like I am at home,” he says.
Of course, the differences are pronounced. Somalis traditionally drink spiced black coffee, he says, and splash camel milk into their tea. Camel meat in Somalia is stewed, grilled or roasted.
Meanwhile, the tin and timber visitor centre on Martin’s farm serves camel milk cappuccinos and camel pies, and sells everything from camel vodka to sausages.
While it is a far cry from the wares of Mogadishu, Ahmed Selat says it is “really good” to see camel milk being incorporated into western coffee culture.
“Creativity is important,” he says. “And using traditional [meat and milk] in modern dishes can help bridge cultures and create new markets.
“We see, in Australia and Somalia, an opportunity to connect the cultures and diversify diets and build sustainable industry.”
Europe is being told to wake up. French president Emmanuel Macron’s recent warning that the continent faces a “geopolitical and geo-economic state of emergency” has landed with a familiar thud: invest faster and remove barriers to growth or be swept aside by American technology and Chinese manufacturing. It is a serious warning and a necessary one. But it risks reinforcing a narrative that is both lazy and dangerous: that Europe’s best days are behind it, that it is a heritage vista of cathedrals and cobblestones, a wonderful place to visit but a frustrating place to build. That story is wrong, but if Europe’s entrepreneurs and innovators and its political leaders keep repeating it, it may yet become a self-fulfilling prophecy.I have spent much of my academic life at London Business School studying how new ventures are born and scaled, often under far more constrained conditions than those facing most of today’s European founders. I have a ring-side seat from which I can observe what the possibilities hold — and what stands in the way — for Europe today.
Europe’s key strengths
Europe is not short of assets. It is dense with world-class universities, deep scientific capability, sophisticated customers and advanced infrastructure built over centuries. Research and recognition from major European institutions show how academic ecosystems contribute directly to venture formation and scaling. London Business School’s Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital (IEPC) was honoured for its “exceptional contributions in entrepreneurship research” at the 2023 Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers awards.Oxford Saïd’s Entrepreneurship Centre supports venture creation through initiatives such as the Entrepreneurship Project and the Oxford Seed Fund, which have helped student-led ventures launch and secure funding, illustrating how academic support tangibly feeds into real-world enterprise outcomes. These are not relics. They are platforms. The industrial revolution that reshaped the world in the 18th and 19th centuries did not spring from thin air. It was ignited by institutions, skills and capital that already existed, recombined in new ways by people who refused to accept the limits of their age. That same opportunity exists now.
Design constraints
Yes, Europe’s markets are fragmented, and regulation can be heavy. Risk capital is scarcer than in Silicon Valley. In 2023, European tech companies raised roughly half the venture capital that US peers did, despite comparable population and economic scale, with the funding gap particularly pronounced at growth and late stages. European pension funds, among the continent’s largest institutional investors, typically allocate only low single-digit percentages of assets to venture capital and private equity, compared with double-digit allocations among major US pension funds, limiting capital availability to drive companies toward scale.But these are not excuses for pessimism; they are design constraints to be resolved. In my book The New Business Road Test, I argued that the best ventures are built not on hype, but on a cold-eyed understanding of markets, industries and entrepreneurial teams. Europe, with its demanding customers and complex environments, remains an unusually good laboratory for building businesses that are robust rather than brittle. European scale-ups such as Spotify and Adyen built globally competitive businesses by prioritising disciplined expansion and revenue traction before tapping deeper capital markets.A London Business School 2013 research report on organisational ambidexterity and adaptive strategy also supports this framing. The report found that firms with disciplined practices and customer-centric innovation outperform peers in complex markets.
The next sparks?
Defence is an obvious spark for the next wave of European innovation. The uncomfortable truth is that geopolitical pressure concentrates minds and loosens purse strings. Dual-use technologies, advanced materials, cyber resilience and autonomous systems will all benefit. But defence is not the whole story, nor should it be. Europe has long been world-class in aerospace, pharmaceuticals, industrial engineering and robotics. These sectors sit precisely at the intersection of deep science, patient capital and with the long time horizons where Europe has a comparative advantage.Consider healthcare and life sciences. Europe’s ageing population is often framed as a fiscal burden. It also underpins some of the largest unmet customer needs on the planet. The same applies to energy systems, climate technologies and advanced manufacturing. These are not frivolous consumer apps chasing attention; they are mission-driven markets crying out for serious innovation.
What will it take?
Revisiting the cri de cœur that Europe is doomed if it fails to confront its sclerosis, it is worth noting that unchecked growth also carries risks. WeWork’s $47bn private valuation imploded after its failed 2019 IPO exposed unsustainable cash burn and fragile unit economics, a cautionary tale of scale without substance. Europe’s caution may therefore reflect foresight rather than weakness.
Reform remains essential: capital markets must deepen, cultural and other barriers to entrepreneurial growth and success must fall, and universities must ease the flow of ideas and talent from lab to market. But reform alone is not enough. Europe’s gravest threat is not American tech or Chinese imports, but resignation, the quiet assumption that its role is to regulate while others invent and build, a mindset far harder to dismantle.
Samsung Electronics Pakistan today inaugurated the second cohort of Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC) at a ceremony held at DHA Raya Country Club in Lahore, reinforcing its long-term commitment to equipping Pakistan’s youth with future-ready Artificial Intelligence (AI) skills and accelerating the country’s digital transformation.
The opening ceremony brought together Samsung leadership, industry executives, HR leaders from Pakistan’s leading technology companies, and 50 newly enrolled Lahore-based students who will undertake an intensive, in-person AI training programme over the coming months across partner campuses in Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad.
This year’s cohort builds on the momentum of SIC’s inaugural cycle. The programme has strengthened its industry linkages, curriculum depth, and focus on inclusive access, particularly for students from underserved communities and women in technology.
The expansion comes at a pivotal moment for Pakistan’s technology ecosystem. With over 60 percent of the country’s population under the age of 30 and IT exports approaching USD 4 billion in FY 2024–25, the demand for AI-skilled professionals has never been more urgent. Pakistan’s National AI Policy 2025 has set an ambitious target of training one million AI professionals by 2030. Programmes like SIC are translating that ambition into structured, employment-oriented action at the grassroots level.
Speaking at the ceremony, the President of Samsung Electronics Pakistan mentioned Samsung’s global vision for the programme: “At Samsung, we see AI not as an end in itself, but as infrastructure, technology that becomes most powerful when it is dependable, accessible, and woven into everyday life. Pakistan’s young population is not a challenge to be managed; it is a strategic advantage to be unlocked. Through Samsung Innovation Campus, we are investing in the people who will build that future.”
Participants in SIC’s second cohort will complete 270 hours of structured AI course and lab work, spanning machine learning, data science, natural language processing, and deep learning, followed by an 80-hour capstone project addressing real-world challenges. The programme is designed to bridge the persistent gap between university education and employer expectations.
Ahmed Wahab Shah, Director of Corporate Marketing, Samsung Electronics Pakistan, outlined the programme’s strategic rationale: “SIC is built on a simple premise: Pakistan’s demographic youth bulge can become a demographic dividend if we invest in the right skills at the right time. Every graduate we produce is one more AI professional ready to contribute – not only to Pakistan’s digital economy, but to the global technology workforce.”
Umer Ghumman, Senior Director at Samsung Electronics Pakistan, addressed students on the leadership qualities that distinguish exceptional technology professionals, emphasising that technical proficiency alone is insufficient without curiosity, resilience, and the ability to translate AI capabilities into real business value.
The programme prioritises students from diverse and underserved educational backgrounds, with a strong emphasis on increasing female participation, ensuring that Pakistan’s emerging AI workforce reflects the breadth and diversity of its population.
The Guest of Honor, Ahmed Khan, CEO of PSDF shared, “Programs like Samsung Innovation Campus will prove to be decisive given the future of learning methodologies. When a brand of Samsung’s stature invests in inclusive, employment-oriented AI training, it sends a powerful signal: Pakistan’s youth are not just job-seekers, they are the future builders of a digital economy.”
A distinguishing feature of SIC is its deep integration with Pakistan’s technology industry. HR leaders and hiring managers from leading software houses and technology companies attended the opening ceremony, signaling the programme’s direct relevance to current employer needs. Graduates from the first cohort have already secured positions and internships at prominent firms across the country, validating the programme’s employment-first design.