Centre For Economic & Deal Intelligence
Pakistan's Closed-Door Platform For The Questions That Decide Deals: Competition, Economic Security, Disputes & Arbitration, And Investment. Small Rooms. Senior People. Chatham House Rule.
CEDI is an independent, non-partisan intelligence and convening platform for Pakistan's deal economy.
It brings regulators, corporates, banks, and senior counsel into the same closed-door room, around the competition, economic-security, arbitration, and investment questions that decide how deals are structured, disputes are resolved, and capital moves in and out of Pakistan.
Pakistan is re-engineering its investment architecture at a pace the market's institutions have not matched. The Special Investment Facilitation Council channels strategic capital across defence production, agriculture, minerals, IT, and energy; Gulf sovereign investors and Chinese partners negotiate transactions of unusual scale and sensitivity; privatisations and concessions sit at the intersection of commerce, law, and national security. Simultaneously, Pakistani-linked deals face foreign investment screening abroad, under the EU's FDI Screening Regulation, CFIUS, the UK's National Security and Investment Act, and emerging Gulf regimes, and Pakistan's arbitration record, from Reko Diq to Karkey, has made dispute exposure a board-level question.
Yet no platform in Pakistan convenes the three communities who own these questions, government and regulators, business decision-makers, and senior legal advisers, in one room, off the record, at implementation level. Policy seminars discuss doctrine. Bar events discuss cases. Chambers discuss sentiment. Nobody convenes the deal.
pillars
PFIS 27 attendee cap
Founding Patron seat
The CEDI Model
CEDI is built on a format proven over eight years by Europe's leading closed-door forum on investment screening and economic security, whose organising team includes CEDI's principal. Four design rules govern everything CEDI runs.
01
Small rooms, hard caps.
Roundtables of 15–25; the flagship forum capped at 70. A seat is valuable because seats are scarce.
02
Strict Chatham House Rule; no public sessions.
No press, no recording, no attributed quotation. Officials speak as practitioners, not spokespeople. Public visibility comes only through short, non-attributed market notes.
03
The triangular room.
Every session seats at least one government or regulatory voice, one business decision-maker, and one senior legal or advisory voice, or it is not run.
04
Implementation level only.
Faculty must have worked the issue: closed the deal, argued the case, run the review. Doctrine without a transaction attached does not make the programme.
What CEDI Runs
A permanent platform with five interlocking products, built to generate influence, intelligence, and revenue simultaneously, not a one-off event vehicle. Deliberately not in Year 1: a standalone multi-day arbitration conference, a five-track programme, a subscription dashboard, or an executive-training arm. Each is deferred until the corresponding Year 1 product oversubscribes.
PFIS 27 Forum + Banquet
The anchor: five sessions spanning all four pillars, closing with an invitation-only banquet and dinner speech
Annual; 70 cap; Islamabad
Pakistan Arbitration & Investment Day
Co-located with PFIS 27, sharing its venue, international faculty, and curation standards
Annual; 60–80; co-located with PFIS
CEDI Arbitration Roundtables
Enforcement of foreign awards and investor-state exposure, twice a year in Karachi and Lahore
2× per year; 20–25; Karachi/Lahore
CEDI Leaders Roundtables
Small-group sessions on live implementation issues across Economic Security, Competition, and Investment
2× per year; 15–20; rotating
CEDI Market Notes & Pakistan Arbitration Note
The intelligence layer: non-attributed post-event summaries and the annual enforcement tracker
Post-event + annual
Roadmap
Phase 1
Q3 2026
Founding conversations with prospective patrons and partners; international partnership and advisory arrangements finalised; stakeholder engagement with SIFC, BOI, CCP, SBP, and SECP begins; website transition from CECI to CEDI.
Phase 2
Nov 2026
Proof-of-concept CEDI Roundtable (12–15 persons, Islamabad, Chatham House): ‘Pakistani deals under foreign screening regimes.’ Private 2-page summary within 48 hours, the artefact all partnership conversations are built on.
Phase 3
Q1 2027
CEDI Arbitration Roundtable I, Karachi: ‘Enforcement of foreign awards in Pakistan, the state of play.’ Partnership positions closed; venue contracted; PFIS speaker invitations issued.
Phase 4
April 2027
PFIS 27 (Islamabad) plus the co-located Pakistan Arbitration & Investment Day. Private summaries in 72 hours; public market note in two weeks; renewals open.
Phase 5
H2 2027
Arbitration Roundtable II, Lahore; a Leaders Roundtable on a live competition or economic-security issue; the first annual Pakistan Arbitration Note published.
Phase 6
2028
PFIS 28; the Arbitration Day expands to a full day only if the 2027 half-day oversubscribes; intelligence subscriptions opened to non-partners.
Trust & Credibility
Governance And Integrity
CEDI is independent and non-partisan.
Partners receive access and visibility; programme content, speaker selection, and research outputs remain under the convener's editorial control.
The Chatham House Rule is structurally enforced.
No press, no recording, no attributed quotation, no publication beyond agreed non-attributed summaries.
An advisory group reviews every programme for balance.
Including at least one former senior official, one academic, and one international practitioner, before invitations are issued.
Government and regulatory participants attend without fee.
And without any sponsorship linkage.
CEDI's factual outputs are verification-led.
Claims about Pakistani law reflect enacted law as it stands: for example, the pending status of comprehensive data-protection legislation and of arbitration-law reform is stated as pending, not assumed.
Explore CEDI
The Four Pillars
Competition, Economic Security, Disputes & Arbitration, and Investment, each with its own Year 1 footprint.
PFIS 27
The flagship forum: April 2027, Islamabad, capped at 70, under strict Chatham House Rule.
Arbitration
The CEDI Arbitration Roundtable series and the Pakistan Arbitration & Investment Day.