Category: 3. Business

The Privatisation Commission on Friday signed an agreement with financial advisers for the privatisation of Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited (ZTBL), a statement from the Ministry of Privatisation said.

Founded in 1961 as the ADBP, it was renamed and incorporated as ZTBL in 2002 under the Companies Ord­inance 1984. The bank of­­fers agricultural credit and banking services to farmers nationwide and remains Pakistan’s largest public-sector agri lender.

Last month, the Board of the Privatisation Com­mission had approved the ap­­pointment of financial advisers for the divestme­nt of ZTBL, marking it as one of the government’s priority transactions in the current privatisation pipeline.

“The Privatisation Commission has signed a Financial Advisory Services Agreement (Fasa) with a consortium led by Next Capital Limited for the strategic privatisation of Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited (ZTBL),” the statement said.

It added that the consortium also includes Ijaz Ahmed and Associates, Baker Tilly Mehmood Idrees Qamar, Executives Network International, Bridge Public Relations, Savills Pakistan Private Limited, and Prima Global Consulting Pvt Ltd.

“This initiative reflects the government’s unwavering commitment to inviting private sector investment, modernising banking operations, and ensuring the long-term sustainability of state-owned enterprises (SOEs),” the statement added.

According to the statement, post-privatisation, ZTBL, with its nationwide network of 501 branches, will be better positioned to deliver faster, more accessible credit to small farmers and rural communities.

It added that the bank will be able to “introduce modern banking technologies and digital solutions for agriculture financing as well as strengthen governance, transparency, and accountability, expand financial products tailored for emerging agribusiness opportunities and enhance customer service and on-ground responsiveness to meet farmers’ evolving needs”.

The privatisation of ZTBL is designed to catalyse investment in Pakistan’s agricultural future by combining private sector efficiency with ZTBL’s long-standing expertise in agricultural finance for fostering rural prosperity and ensuring farmers have timely access to essential financial resources.

Under the agreement, the financial advisers will conduct sell-side due diligence, carry out market sounding, engage with potential investors, structure the transaction, market it to investors, and assist the Privatisation Commission in a transparent bidding process, the ministry said.

The winning consortium had achieved the highest technical and financial score among six competing bidders, which incl­uded other leading groups headed by Arif Habib Ltd, AF Fergu­son, AKD Securities Ltd, Bri­­­­­dge Factor, and JS Bank.

The board also approved the formation of a nego­tiation committee to finalise the Fasa with the selected consortium.

Last month, the Senate Standing Committee on Privatisation had raised concerns over the government’s plans to privatise two state-owned entities — the Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation (PMDC) and ZTBL — and questioned the rationale behind their inclusion in the programme.

Kingsmill’s owner has said it has agreed to buy rival Hovis and plans to merge the companies in a move that would create the UK’s biggest bread brand.

Associated British Foods (ABF) which also owns Primark, Ryvita and Twinings, said it would cut costs to make the two currently loss-making businesses profitable.

The Unite union represents workers at Hovis and Kingsmill and warned it would “not tolerate attacks on jobs, pay or conditions”.

Warburtons is the current market leader in UK breadmaking and the deal would need approval from the competition watchdog in order to go ahead.

Sales of Kingsmill and Hovis loaves are thought to have fallen flat due to a drop in demand for basic pre-packaged bread, as speciality breads such as sourdough and ciabatta took a bigger slice of the market.

Sandwiches and toast are also off the menu for some British consumers who are cutting back on carbohydrates in favour of high-protein diets.

ABF told investors on Friday it had reached an agreement to buy historic brand Hovis from private equity owner Endless.

It said the combined business would be “better placed to compete effectively” and to create new products “as a result of changing consumer tastes and needs.”

ABF’s Allied Bakeries business, which makes Kingsmill and Allinson’s bread, first confirmed talks over a potential deal three months ago.

Hovis, which was founded in 1890, was bought by Endless in 2020 from Premier Foods, which owns the Mr Kipling brand.

ABF said the deal would lead to “significant costs synergies and efficiencies” in an effort to create a sustainably profitable bread business.

George Weston, chief executive of ABF said: “This solution will create value for shareholders, provide greater choice for consumers and increase efficiencies for customers.”

But Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “While there is still a long way to go before any buyout happens, Hovis and Kingsmill must ensure that jobs are protected.”

She said Unite would be working to ensure the two brands fully involve the union in any decisions that impact its members.

The deal requires approval from the Competition and Markets Authority.

In 2016, turmeric lattes were all the rage, but Sana Javeri Kadri thought the ones in San Francisco, where she lives, tasted nothing like the fresh spices she grew up with in India.

A former line cook who was doing marketing for a Bay Area grocer, Javeri Kadri “knew [her] way around spices”, but was new to the industry. Still, she booked a ticket home to Mumbai, hoping that she could get richer flavors into US pantries.

After reaching out to a number of growers, she met an organic turmeric farmer and, using her tax refund and a loan from her parents, bought a batch of the crop. It became the foundation of Diaspora Co, which Javeri Kadri launched the following year at just 23.

From the outset, Javeri Kadri aimed to bypass industrial spice farms, whose products she found bland, and instead source from farmers using regenerative practices. This meant working directly with the producers and paying them a living wage.

“By rough math, I probably reached out to around 2,500 farmers,” she said.

After two years of growing a US market for her turmeric, Javeri Kadri added black pepper to the mix. For a while after that, it was an “exponential growth curve”, she said.

Today Diaspora Co has 24 employees and sells around 40 different spices and blends, sourced from 140 different farms in India and Sri Lanka.

Diaspora Co is part of a wave of new spice companies, including Burlap & Barrel and Spicewalla, that center sourcing from sustainable farms, paying producers a living wage, building a more transparent (and streamlined) supply chain – steps they say allow them to put noticeably fresher spices on the market.

Javeri Kadri said it was common knowledge in the industry that because of the long supply chains, it can take years for spices to reach consumers, meaning they are “expired before they even get to you”.

She said Diaspora Co farmers rotate their crops, maintain plant diversity and use water-retention systems – regenerative practices that not only minimize the farms’ carbon footprint, but also make them more resilient to climate shocks.

That meant when extreme flooding struck Tamil Nadu, India, last year, Diaspora’s cardamom farm “had such great aerated soil and such good irrigation, they were only in standing water for a few hours before the soil and the property was able to flush itself clean”, minimizing losses, she said.

Javeri Kadri stressed that her partners were already practicing sustainable agriculture before she arrived on the scene, but she connects them with each other. “If you get them talking, they problem-solve themselves,” she said. “They’re all experts.”

Diaspora Co enjoys low worker turnover and lasting partnerships, something Javeri Kadri attributes to the company’s commitment to fair wages. “Once we build a relationship with them, it never goes anywhere,” she said.

In 2022, Diaspora Co launched a fund for farm workers, offering financial literacy workshops and providing seed money to open bank accounts, among other things. At a cardamom farm, workers asked for a community room and kitchen, which Javeri Kadri admitted wasn’t what she expected. But “it’s what they need, not what we think sitting in America that they need,” she said. “Really the point of it is that we listen to the workers directly.”

Franco Fubini, a Diaspora Co board member and founder and CEO of sustainable food sourcing platform Natoora, said Javeri Kadri wasn’t just “trading spices”, she was building a unique supply chain and helping to catalyze demand for products that “are created in harmony with nature”.

He added: “Whenever you have a company that is creating a market by stimulating demand, buying the right product, paying the right price for it, and creating a healthy farming ecosystem – that is what revolutionizing the food system is all about.”

Diaspora’s efforts to, as Javeri Kadri puts it, “decolonize the spice trade” have also proven profitable. She’s raised about $2.5m from angel investors in the last few years, and though she declined to share revenue numbers, she said the company had grown twentyfold over the past five years. Its spices are now sold in 400 US stores, and last year, with help from Natoora, Diaspora Co expanded into the UK.

Rather than pressuring existing partners to produce more and more, which could tax the land (and workers), Javeri Kadri said she plans to keep adding new farm partners in order to continue to boost production.

Javeri Kadri has other projects on the horizon, including a new Masala Chai tea blend, another blend developed with the former Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, and a cookbook featuring recipes from partner farms. “A lot of people tell me, ‘Oh, Indian food is intimidating or heavy or complicated,’ and the whole premise of the book is, how do we make it as bright and fresh and accessible as possible?” Javeri Kadri said.

She plans to roll out these projects while managing an altogether new challenge: This month, Donald Trump said he would raise tariffs on Indian products to 50%, a move that Javeri Kadri predicts will cost her company between $100,000 and $200,000 by the end of the year, leaving her no choice but to eventually raise prices. (She said they had already paid about $20,000 in tariffs since April, when the US imposed its initial levies.)

Javeri Kadri’s entire business model is built on sourcing spices from the areas they are indigenous to in south Asia, which means she couldn’t pivot her supply chain even if she wanted to.

“People will say, ‘Well, we don’t need those exotic ingredients anyway,’” she said. But, she added, “there’s nothing as American as apple pie. And apple pie relies on cinnamon. An American classic is vanilla ice cream; we don’t grow vanilla. A lot of these ingredients are inherently not exotic, but they come from elsewhere.”

Tariffs could have an especially devastating effect on mission-driven companies like Diaspora, which operate on small margins even as they prioritize single-source farms and fair labor, said David Ortega, the Noel W Stuckman chair in food economics and policy at Michigan State University. “These tariff price increases can really jeopardize those priorities.”

With the higher tariffs – and the economic uncertainty surrounding trade policy – Javeri Kadri acknowledges that it may be hard to grow in the US market over the coming years. Her approach?

“We grow elsewhere. We go where we’re not penalized for doing business,” she said. “It’s very simple.”

Bitcoin’s rally to an all-time high Thursday was short lived, as disappointing economic data and limited government interest threw cold water on the white-hot cryptocurrency.

The price of bitcoin reached a record of $124,436 early in the day following a 2.6% gain Wednesday, but by late afternoon it was down more than 4%. The Trump Administration has fueled optimism for the crypto market, as the president has indicated he would reduce regulation and establish a digital asset stockpile similar to the U.S. gold reserves.

Nonetheless, the U.S. does not plan to buy more crypto for its bitcoin reserve, which holds between $15 billion and $20 billion in assets, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday.

FIRST UP

Intel had a years-long downturn as it failed to keep up with its competitors in the AI race.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

Intel shares skyrocketed shortly before the close of trading Thursday as Bloomberg reported the Trump Administration may take a stake in the chipmaker to help the struggling firm strengthen its domestic manufacturing. Trump recently met with CEO Lip-Bu Tan despite calling for his ouster last week, and the company’s stock ended the day with a more than 7% gain, its highest level since March.

Earlier this week, Paramount signed a blockbuster seven-year deal for the streaming rights to UFC for a staggering $7.7 billion. Considering how Paramount has struggled with profitability for years, it’s reasonable to wonder how the newly merged company plans to recoup that value. But new owner and CEO David Ellison—son of world’s second richest person, Oracle founder Larry Ellison—has made it clear his intention is to reverse that losing trend. And with the addition of UFC, suddenly Paramount is a real player in the sports media landscape and streaming wars.

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BUSINESS + FINANCE

In a shift from Tuesday’s positive inflation news, wholesale prices increased more than expected in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The price of services drove an increase of 0.9% when only 0.2% had been anticipated, and stocks ended the day mostly flat after initially slipping on the news.

WEALTH + ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Nike co-founder Phil Knight

Getty Images

Nike cofounder Phil Knight became the latest billionaire to give a record-setting amount to an educational institution, as he and his wife Penny gifted $2 billion to the Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute. The largest-ever university donation will roughly double the cancer center’s size, according to the Wall Street Journal, and allow the institute to “transform the way we care for patients while continuing to develop innovative treatments,” says its former CEO Dr. Brian Druker.

SPORTS + ENTERTAINMENT

As 12-time NBA all-star Chris Paul plans for his final season, he’s following in the footsteps of basketball stars like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson by launching a new business venture, The Chris Paul Collective. The entity will house all of his businesses and investments, including his minor equity stake in the most valuable franchise in the NWSL, Angel City FC, which Forbes values at $280 million.

TRENDS + EXPLAINERS

Members of the National Guard outside Union Station in Washington, DC.

Getty Images

President Donald Trump has indicated he would replicate his controversial decision to deploy the National Guard and take control of city police in Washington D.C. in other Democrat-led cities, but in reality, he would face far more legal limitations. The president does not have power to influence local police forces in other cities, though Trump would potentially be able to deploy the military through invoking the Insurrection Act. And a lawsuit over Trump’s use of the National Guard in Los Angeles could determine how much power local and state officials have to challenge his moves.

As the Trump administration moves to reduce federal regulations, states run by Democrats are rushing to fill the gap. The latest example came earlier this week, when New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a lawsuit against the company behind popular money transfer app Zelle, alleging it let fraud proliferate on Zelle for several years and didn’t do enough to stop it, costing consumers “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

DAILY COVER STORY

Meet The Mastermind Behind The $1.9 Billion Poppi Deal

Rohan Oza played a key role in the Poppi deal

Ryan West for Forbes

Shark Tank veteran Rohan Oza has been searching for the perfect soft drink for the past 20 years.

Oza, cofounder of Los Angeles-based private equity firm Cavu Consumer Partners, was the chairman of prebiotic soda Poppi and its single largest individual shareholder when Pepsi acquired it in May for $1.9 billion. It’s Oza’s biggest exit yet, but it’s far from his first, having played a key role in some of the largest beverage acquisitions of the past two decades, including Vitaminwater and Smartwater.

On a 2018 episode of ABC’s Shark Tank, Oza took a 25% stake in the Austin, Texas-based beverage brand founded by husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Stephen and Allison Ellsworth for $400,000.

Then Oza changed everything. He rebranded Mother Beverage, as the Ellsworths had named it, as Poppi. The liquid went from an apple cider vinegar drink to a prebiotic soda, and the packaging changed from glass to cans. The bran­ding morphed from farmer’s-market artisanal to bright, Millennial-friendly colors.

Leading up to Pepsi’s acquisition at a 3.3-times-revenue multiple, Forbes estimates that Oza owned about 21% of Poppi and Cavu owned another 37%. That netted him some $250 million (post-tax) directly from the sale and another roughly $50 million through Cavu. Those proceeds—in addition to exits reinvested and his 50% stake in Cavu—add up to an estimated net worth of roughly $500 million.

Such success, says Oza, an immigrant from Zambia who came to the U.S. in 1995, represents his own American Dream. “There’s no consumer audience in the world that is willing to embrace new brands as rapidly as Americans are,” Oza says. “I came here with a dream. It’s full circle.”

WHY IT MATTERS

“The quest for the next hit drink is a tale as old as time, and when it comes to modernizing soda today as demand for healthier options soars, Rohan Oza is the one to watch,” says Forbes staff writer Chloe Sorvino.

MORE How Surfside Became The Fastest-Growing Alcohol Brand In America

FACTS + COMMENTS

Taylor Swift announced details about her upcoming album The Life of a Showgirl on Wednesday, drawing over a million viewers to the New Heights podcast on YouTube where the billionaire pop star discussed the record. The show is co-hosted by her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, and his brother, former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce:

1.2 million: The number of concurrent viewers the podcast garnered

12: The number of songs on the album, including a title track featuring fellow pop star Sabrina Carpenter

Over 6 million: How many copies sold of Swift’s last album, The Tortured Poets Department, one of her most commercially successful records

STRATEGY + SUCCESS

Using AI tools like ChatGPT at work can be a great way to boost productivity, but it also comes with risks that are critical for employees to understand. Start by looking into your company’s AI policy, and if one doesn’t exist, ask for guidance. Be sure to double-check any AI-generated work and add your personal voice or insights so you don’t sound too generic. And never enter your company’s proprietary information into public AI tools.

VIDEO

QUIZ

The IRS rolled out technology designed to help taxpayers at its Taxpayer Assistance Centers back in 2011, but a recent audit found only 55% were operational. What kind of technology was it?

A. An AI tax chatbot

B. A self-service kiosk

C. iPads with frequently asked questions

D. Robots to issue taxpayer ID numbers

Check your answer.

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Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.

A quick left hook, a front kick to the chest, a few criss-cross jabs, and the crowd cheers. But it is not kickboxing prowess that concludes the match. It is an attempted roundhouse kick that squarely misses its target, sending the kickboxer from a top university team tumbling to the floor.

While traditional kickboxing comes with the risk of blood, sweat and serious head injuries, the competitors in Friday’s match at the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing faced a different set of challenges. Balance, battery life and a sense of philosophical purpose being among them.

The kickboxers, pint-sized humanoid robots entered by teams from leading Chinese technological universities, are part of a jamboree of humanoid events taking place at China’s latest technology event. After spectators in the 12,000-seater National Speed Skating Oval, built for the 2022 Winter Olympics, stood for the Chinese national anthem on Friday morning, the government-backed games began.

“I came here out of curiosity,” said Hong Yun, a 58-year-old retired engineer, sat in the front row. Seeing the robots race was “much more exciting than seeing real humans”, Hong added.

The games put on display China’s prowess in humanoid robotics, a technological field that has been pushed to the forefront of the country’s artificial intelligence industry. The hype machine is in full swing.

As well as kickboxing, humanoids participated in athletics, football and dance competitions. One robot had to drop out of the 1500-metre because its head flew off partway round the course. “Keeping [the head] balanced while in movement is the biggest challenge for us,” said Wang Ziyi, a 19-year-old student from Beijing Union University, who was part of the team that entered the robot.

Ever since a troupe of humanoid dancing robots took the stage at the 2025 Spring Festival Gala, a televised lunar new year’s celebration viewed nearly 17bn times online, Beijing has been enthusiastically pushing the adoption of “embodied AI” – an industry that was singled out in this year’s government work report in March.

The social-media-friendly events reflect a more serious geopolitical reality: an intensifying US-China technological competition that could reshape the frontiers of AI.

The technology has become a lightning rod for relations between the two countries. And while the US still has the lead on frontier research, owing in part to Washington’s restrictions on the export of cutting-edge chips to China, Beijing is going all-in on real life applications, such as robotics.

Several cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, have established 10bn yuan (£1bn) robotics industry funds. In January, the state-owned Bank of China announced plans for a 1tn yuan of financial support to the AI industry over the next five years.

“If there is an area where [Beijing] thinks that China is ahead, or could be positioned as a world leader, then they really want to draw attention to that area,” said Dr Kyle Chan, a researcher at Princeton University.

There is something strangely ominous about seeing jerky, human-like robots with two arms, two legs, and blank heads being dragged out of the ring to be recharged by their human handlers.

When it comes to humanoids, the Chinese industry has many advantages. Although US companies such as Tesla and Boston Dynamics are still seen as the overall market leaders, several Chinese firms such as UBTech and Unitree Robotics – which supplied the boxing robots in Friday’s games – are catching up.

Tesla relies on China for many of the parts needed to build the company’s physical humanoids. The US investment bank Morgan Stanley estimates that China-based supply chains produce robots at a third of the cost of non-China suppliers. “It appears to be very difficult to entirely decouple from China in this space,” wrote Sheng Zhong, the bank’s head of China industrials research, in a recent note.

As well as generating positive publicity on social media, China views humanoids as being part of the solution to the problems created by the country’s ageing population and shrinking workforce. A recent article in People’s Daily, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist party, said robots could offer practical and emotional support for older people. “The vision of robot-assisted elderly care is not far away,” it said. Humanoid robots could also take the place of employees on factory lines as China tries to retrain and redeploy its workforce into more hi-tech jobs.

But for all the hype, there is a big gap between humanoids stumbling over footballs and reliably handling daily tasks. Safely interacting with vulnerable humans would be another leap. “The home is probably one of the last places you’ll ever find a humanoid robot because of safety,” said Chan. “My general view on the whole humanoid explosion … is honestly a bit of scepticism.”

Two of the biggest barriers to the technology being useful outside of PR stunts are the complexity of the human-built environment and the hands needed to navigate it.

While other forms of AI, such as large language models, can be trained using reams of digital data, there are much smaller datasets available for training an algorithm on how to walk through crowded restaurants or up and down flights of stairs. Although China’s efforts to get robots out into the real world can help companies to harvest more data, it is still a big bottleneck in the industry, Chan said.

Dr Jonathan Aitken, a robotics teacher at the University of Sheffield, agreed. “The state of AI is nowhere near seeing humanoids operating out of uncontrolled environments,” he said.

And while robots jumping and kicking looks impressive, mundane daily tasks such as handling a kitchen knife or folding laundry requires dexterous hands, a skill technology companies have yet to crack. A human hand has about 27 “degrees of freedom” – ie, independent movements through space. Tesla’s Optimus humanoid, one of the most advanced models on the market, has 22.

Still, China has beat the odds before when it comes to turbocharged advances. Just 10 years ago, the country exported fewer than 375,00 cars a year. Now China is the world’s biggest automobile supplier, shipping nearly 6m vehicles annually. The European Union has increased tariffs on Chinese-built electric vehicles in an attempt to stem the flow.

In China, the political and public will is firmly behind the humanoids. Zhan Guangtao came to the humanoid games with her two daughters on Friday, after her elder child’s school gave them free tickets. “It’s good to have my children in touch with the world’s most advanced robotics,” Zhan said. “Exposing them to hi-tech will broaden their horizons.”

Additional research by Lillian Yang