by HENNY SENDER
Mian Muhammad Mansha, Pakistan’s wealthiest man, has invited me to lunch at his home, an estate outside Lahore he created some years ago by purchasing almost 250 acres from 50 smallholders.
There, he and his wife, Naz, have created a lush paradise, with a small lake stocked with fish, and young guava, lychee, peach and pear trees dotting the man-made hills. A yellow sandstone mansion with the dimensions of a boutique resort sits like a fort on the highest hill, its red-tiled roof visible from the road.
The effect is rather more luxuriant and well maintained than Emperor Jahangir’s Shalimar Gardens in Lahore, one of the capitals of Mughal India. That garden, like the state of Pakistan itself, has fallen on hard times but this estate – and the wealth behind it – suggest that Pakistan has been kind to the Mansha family.
…
His textile plants, the largest in the country, generate more revenue than anything other than the $11.2bn in remittances that Pakistanis living abroad sent home last year. He owns MCB, the most profitable bank in the country; his Adamjee Insurance is the largest general insurer in Pakistan. He is also – since his discounted purchase in 2009 of two power plants from American producer AES – one of the biggest providers of power in a country where power shortages remain one of its most intractable problems.
And, should peace ever come to Afghanistan, the cement from Nishat’s DG Khan Cement Company, Pakistan’s largest cement maker, will go into repairing its neighbour’s broken infrastructure.
…
As we chat, a flock of huge swans materialises on the far side of the lake. Mansha’s wife joins us. She is wearing black trousers and an elegant black kurta, with white embroidery, beneath an embroidered pashmina shawl. Like all the women in the family, she works in the family business. She oversees Nishat Linens, which supplies bedding to some of the biggest hotel chains in the world and is slowly becoming a flagship brand for the group, with retail outlets both at home and in the Gulf. (A daughter-in-law has responsibility for the group’s St James’s Hotel in London.)
Financial Times for more
(Thanks to Robin Khundkar. His note: “A fluff read! There is a Cal connection. I wonder if they are related to the Barkatullah family who still own a posh tailoring shop on Park Street. Also Punjabis from West Punjab settled in Bengal.”