Category: 3. Business

Synergy Group, Pakistan’s largest integrated marketing communications conglomerate, has once again demonstrated its creative leadership at the prestigious Dragons of Pakistan 2025 Awards, securing a total of 15 accolades across multiple categories. The Group’s subsidiaries, Synchronize Media, Synite Digital and Synergy Advertising, were recognized for award-winning campaigns developed for leading national and international brands.

Synergy Advertising won two Metal Dragons for the LPG Blue: Jiyo Naye Andaaz Se campaign, along with seven Black Dragons recognizing work for Pakistan State Oil, Yango Pakistan, and Hyundai Nishat Motor Pakistan. For Synchronize Media, the agency earned two Black Dragons for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Pakistan and one for the State Bank of Pakistan.

Synite Digital was honored for its work on My Suzuki My Story – Season 4 and the Empowering You campaign for Voltaic Solar Power. The agency also received three Black Dragons, two for its campaigns for Pak Suzuki Motor Company and one for Faysal Bank.

The Latif Kapadia Memorial Welfare Trust (LKMWT) also achieved recognition for its Ramzan Campaign, marking its second consecutive award at the Dragons of Pakistan.

Speaking on the wins, Synergy Group Chairman and CEO Mr. Ahmed Kapadia said: “At Synergy, we have always believed that advertising is not just about selling a product, it is about inspiring change, creating conversations and setting new benchmarks for the industry. These are not just recognitions, they are the result of relentless creativity, strategic thinking and the passion of our people. I am proud of the talent and dedication within our team, and I am confident that we will continue to push boundaries and redefine what excellence means in Pakistan’s marketing and advertising landscape.”

On the Dragons of Pakistan leaderboard, Synergy Group ranked among the front-runners with 48 points, including 30 points from Synergy Advertising and 18 from Synite Digital, reflecting the Group’s outstanding performance and leadership in the industry.

Over the past three years, Synergy Group has maintained a winning streak at leading industry platforms including the Effies, Dragons of Asia, Asian Federation of Advertising Associations (AFAA) Awards, and other industry events, earning numerous prestigious recognitions in its 25-year journey. These achievements reflect the Synergy Group’s commitment to creativity, innovation and raising the bar for advertising and marketing in Pakistan.

(Bloomberg) — US stocks stepped back from record highs on Friday as consumer sentiment fell for the first time since April.

The S&P 500 Index declined 0.3% at 12:38 p.m. in New York, pulling back from prior levels. The Nasdaq 100 Index fell 0.4%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.3%.

The preliminary sentiment index for August dropped to 58.6 from 61.7 a month earlier, according to data from the University of Michigan, signaling concern that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are likely to worsen inflation. Consumers expect prices to rise at an annual rate of 4.9% over the next year, more than economists had predicted.

“The inflation expectations component of the consumer confidence data was much higher than expected,” said Miller Tabak’s Matt Maley. “When you combine this with the much lower headline number, it renews concerns about stagflation. So, it’s not a surprise that investors are taking some profits today.”

Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank, said the consumer appears “mixed” so far in the third quarter. “While the data don’t all point in the same direction, the US economy looks to be in okay shape in the third quarter,” Adams said. “What consumers do is more important to the economy than what they say.”

Earlier data showed US retail sales rose in July in a broad-based advance, boosted by car sales and major online promotions. The value of retail purchases, not adjusted for inflation, increased 0.5% after an upwardly revised 0.9% gain in June, according to Commerce Department data released Friday. Excluding cars, sales climbed 0.3%.

Following the “explosive” PPI data on Thursday, Board’s Michelle Green said the retail sales confirm that costs are being successfully passed onto consumers.

“For equities, this creates a margin compression story: consumer-facing companies may sustain top-line growth, but rising input costs will pressure profitability, particularly in goods-heavy sectors,” Green said. “With 4.2% unemployment providing no justification for rate cuts, the Fed’s higher-for-longer stance becomes increasingly likely, keeping discount rates elevated and putting sustained pressure on valuations.”

Next week, investor focus will shift from economic data to the US central bank’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to speak.

Bank of America Corp. strategists led by Michael Hartnett expect US stocks to decline in the event of dovish signals from the Fed at Jackson Hole. A dovish tone from Powell at Jackson Hole could result in stocks sliding as investors “buy rumor, sell fact,” Hartnett said in a note.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska for their first summit in seven years. Both leaders have very different measures of success for the talks: the US president wants a ceasefire in Ukraine, while getting face time without making any concessions is already a win for the Russian leader.

Among single stocks, UnitedHealth Group Inc. surged after funds, including Berkshire Hathaway Inc., piled into shares of the troubled insurer. The investments are a welcome reprieve for a company that had seen its stock fall 46% this year.

The stock reaction for UnitedHealth, as well as the broader managed care sector, is likely a reflection of how “beaten down” the space has been this year, according to Daniel Barasa, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds.

“Overall, I wouldn’t say that this is a definitive signal that the sector has reached a bottom, but it does suggest we may be approaching that point,” said Barasa.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

Will blocking China from accessing relatively high-performing AI chips help the U.S. maintain global AI leadership? Perhaps counterintuitively, the answer is no. Starving China’s supply of U.S.-designed AI chips will have the opposite effect, as it will push China to more effectively develop and deploy its own AI chip capacity and ecosystem. This, in turn, will weaken America’s leadership in AI and related technologies. 

Seesawing policy decisions on AI chip exports 

The competing views regarding U.S. AI chip exports to China are reflected in a set of seesawing policy decisions regarding an Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) known as the H20. GPUs are critical to the computations used to train and run large AI models. And Nvidia, a Silicon Valley company with a market capitalization of over $4 trillion, is by far the world’s leading supplier of high-performance GPUs. 

Nvidia designed the H20 several years ago to comply with Biden-era rules on exporting advanced chips to China. Its performance places it below the threshold that would have run afoul of the Biden administration’s limits.  

In January 2025, Chinese company DeepSeek released an AI model that shook U.S. stock markets, demonstrating that Chinese AI capabilities were significantly more advanced than many people had suspected. In response, the Commerce Department imposed new restrictions on sales of the H20 to China. Nvidia explained in a regulatory filing that the government said “the license requirement will be in effect for the indefinite future” and took a charge of over $5 billion to its quarterly earnings due to the negative impact on sales. 

Then, in July, after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with President Donald Trump, the company announced that “NVIDIA is filing applications to sell the NVIDIA H20 GPU again” and that the “U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon.” 

But the government saying that approval will be granted is different from actually granting approval—and leaves the question of what level of H20 sales to China the U.S. government will permit up for debate. One side of the argument is that keeping sales to a trickle will leave China without access to the AI data center computing power it needs to compete effectively, thereby helping to cement America’s status as the global AI leader. But that is naïve and short-sighted for several reasons.  

U.S.-imposed scarcity will spur greater AI investment within China 

First and most obviously, the more challenges that China faces in obtaining advanced AI chips from the U.S., the more it will invest in growing its own capacity. Huawei has made enormous strides in recent years and has plenty of human and financial capital that it can direct towards AI. Of course, Huawei is already making investments in AI. But those investments will increase in response to the expanded market opportunities within China, globally created by a U.S.-imposed shortage of AI chips.  

The overlooked importance of the network edge 

Second, and more subtly, the long game in AI isn’t only about high-performance chips in AI data centers. AI is an ecosystem that also includes billions of “edge” devices—everything from mobile phones to laptop computers, connected vehicles, and factory automation solutions that sit at the edge of networks. The AI solutions of the future will increasingly involve approaches that use a combination of computing at both the edge device and the data center. 

Huawei has an enormous presence in many markets outside the U.S., a fact reflected in the ubiquitous consumer-facing advertising of Huawei products in regions including Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. In more technical terms, Huawei has extraordinary penetration at the network edge in much of the world. This large and rapidly growing global installed base of Huawei edge devices confers an advantage to Huawei when companies in non-U.S. jurisdictions are making decisions about how to build their AI data centers.  

It’s not an insurmountable advantage. If, as is the case today, America’s AI chips continue to outperform Huawei’s chips, the U.S. will remain a supplier of choice on the global stage. But if America’s best chips are only slightly better than Huawei’s, or not better at all, Huawei’s large installed base of edge devices provides a strong incentive outside the U.S. to build what amounts to all-Huawei AI ecosystems. And if that happens, regardless of how strong the domestic U.S. AI chip market is, the U.S. will have lost the global AI race. 

Boosting the incentives for a U.S.-focused AI ecosystem 

The best way to ensure that doesn’t happen is to limit the economic incentives for China to further accelerate its AI chip advancements. That means letting U.S. companies such as Nvidia and AMD sell highly capable (though not the most capable) chips into the Chinese market. And more broadly, it requires policy attention to ways to better position the U.S. to be the world’s supplier of choice for many different components of the AI ecosystem—including both AI data center chips and edge devices. 

Supermarket chain Iceland will financially reward customers who report incidents of shoplifting, as part of efforts to tackle rising levels of retail theft.

The firm’s executive chairman, Richard Walker, said that shoppers who alert staff to a theft in progress will receive a £1 credit on their Iceland Bonus Card.

The company estimates that shoplifting costs its business around £20m each year.

Mr Walker said this figure not only impacts the company’s bottom line but also limits its ability to reduce prices and reinvest in staff wages.

Iceland told the BBC that the shoplifters don’t necessarily need to be apprehended for customers to receive the £1 reward but will need to be reported and verified.

“We’re encouraging our loyal customers to help sound the alarm, and if they do help to catch a shoplifter, we’ll top up their Bonus Card to spend in store,” Mr Walker said in a statement.

He first made the announcement on Channel 5 News on Thursday.

“Some people see this as a victimless crime, it is not. It’s a cost to the business, to the hours we pay our colleagues, and it involves intimidation and violence,” he said.

He added that encouraging customers to take part in crime prevention could potentially help to reduce prices in stores.

“We’d like customers to help us lower our prices even more by pointing out shoplifters,” Mr Walker said.

Iceland said it does not want customers to directly interact with any shoplifters, but suggests they find the nearest member of staff and alert them with a detailed description of the suspected shoplifter.

The announcement comes amid a steep rise in shoplifting across England and Wales.

According to the Office for National Statistics, police recorded 530,643 shoplifting offences in the year to March 2025.

That’s a 20% increase from 444,022 in the previous year, and the highest figure since current recording practices began in 2002-03.

In response to the growing concerns, the government has pledged to increase neighbourhood policing, promising thousands more officers on patrol by spring 2026.