| Company | What actually happened | What the case tells Pakistan |
|---|---|---|
| P&G / Gillette | Direct manufacturing and commercial activities wound down; P&G moved toward third-party distribution, while Gillette pursued a delisting process | Genuine reduction of direct corporate footprint, but brands can continue in market |
| Sanofi | Sanofi’s controlling 52.87% shareholding was acquired by a Packages-led consortium; the company became Hoechst Pakistan | Foreign ownership changed while local pharmaceutical operations continued |
| Shell | Shell’s majority Pakistan shareholding was sold to Saudi-based Wafi Energy | Sponsor exit and ownership transfer, not disappearance of the retail network |
| Telenor | PTCL completed the acquisition of 100% of Telenor Pakistan and Orion Towers on December 31, 2025 | Foreign shareholder exit became a major Pakistani telecom consolidation |
| Pfizer | Pakistan’s competition regulator approved Lucky Core Industries’ acquisition of certain Pfizer Pakistan assets | Asset localisation and transfer require more precise language than “Pfizer vanished” |
| TotalEnergies | Its 50% stake in Total PARCO Pakistan was sold to Gunvor | Another foreign investor entered the ownership structure as TotalEnergies refocused |
| Microsoft | The local office closed and the model shifted toward partner-led, cloud-based delivery | Physical corporate presence reduced even though customer servicing did not simply cease |
| Careem | Ride-hailing operations were suspended in Pakistan | This was an actual service withdrawal tied to macro conditions, competition and capital allocation |
| Ingredion / Rafhan Maize | Majority ownership moved toward a Nishat-led consortium through an approved acquisition process | A multinational stake sale can simultaneously be foreign withdrawal and Pakistani capital expansion |
The Sanofi transaction was announced as the transfer of Sanofi’s 52.87% stake to a Packages-led consortium, and Hoechst Pakistan later described the local company as continuing the former Sanofi Pakistan operation. Shell sold its Pakistan stake to Wafi Energy, while TotalEnergies sold its 50% Total PARCO interest to Gunvor; in Total PARCO’s case, the underlying retail and lubricants activities were structured to continue. PTCL formally completed its acquisition of Telenor Pakistan and Orion Towers on December 31, 2025. Pakistan’s Competition Commission approved Lucky Core Industries’ purchase of certain Pfizer Pakistan assets.
This is exactly why I find both propaganda camps exhausting. One side takes every share sale, asset transfer, liaison-office closure and distributor transition and screams, “Everybody is escaping Pakistan.” The other side sees precisely the same transactions and announces, “Pakistan defeated Western multinationals.”
Sometimes the foreign shareholder is leaving.
Sometimes the product remains.
Sometimes a Pakistani group buys the assets.
Sometimes another foreign company buys the stake.
Sometimes a company’s entire global operating architecture has changed.
And sometimes, as in Careem’s case, the business directly states that Pakistan’s macroeconomic environment, competition and global capital allocation made further investment difficult to justify. Reuters reported Careem’s CEO citing the “challenging macroeconomic reality”, intensifying competition and global capital allocation when the ride-hailing service was suspended in Pakistan in July 2025.
Every case is separate. Refusing to analyse them separately is not patriotism. It is economic illiteracy wearing a flag.
But Let Us Stop Pretending Pakistan Has No Business Climate Problem
Here is where my disagreement with the “it is all global restructuring” school becomes considerably sharper.
Pakistan did, in fact, create a serious confidence problem when multinational companies were unable to freely repatriate dividends during the foreign-exchange crisis. The Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry publicly said in January 2023 that dividend repatriation had effectively been on hold because of curbs on dollar outflows. At the same time, State Bank reserves fell to levels that analysts described as covering less than three weeks of imports.
Later repatriation improved significantly, but headquarters do not possess the memory of a goldfish. When a multinational board discovers that profits legally earned in one market can become difficult to transmit to shareholders because the host country has run short of dollars, that event enters its risk model.
From my own experience running an engineering and energy business in Pakistan, I find the casual treatment of operating friction almost insulting. Power cost is not a Twitter abstraction. Currency movement is not a television ticker. Tax treatment, banking delays, import restrictions, approvals and inconsistent interpretation by officials become line items, working-capital requirements and missed delivery dates. A Pakistani company often survives this environment because its founders are physically here, its capital is already trapped in the same currency and its entire nervous system has evolved around Pakistani unpredictability.
That does not automatically make us more efficient than P&G.
Sometimes it simply means we are better adapted to pain.
Pharmaceuticals expose the problem even more clearly. Reuters reported in March 2023 that pharmaceutical companies were struggling with losses caused by inflation and a weakened currency while the government delayed decisions on requested medicine price increases. Pakistani business analysts subsequently identified delayed pharmaceutical price approvals as one sector-specific reason multinational operators reconsidered their presence.
One may dislike pharmaceutical companies. One may accuse them of protecting margins. One may want stricter regulation. Fine. But freezing a regulated selling price while imported inputs and currency costs rise is not an industrial strategy. It is arithmetic denial.
