A new report filed by the administrators for Ahmeys has said only an exchanged contract with deposits held has been conducted with an agreed extension in place.

Contracts for the Oxford Road, Cowley-based company’s property sale were exchanged in July 2025, with a total deposit of £122,500 held by January 2026 against a £1.225m sale price.

A pharmacy sign on a shop. (Image: James Manning / PA)

Completion has been repeatedly delayed as the buyer, PharmaLearn, struggled to secure funding due to lower lender valuations and a weak property market, the report suggests.

Rather than terminate the deal which would risk higher costs, delays and a lower sale value (potentially around £900,000), administrators, in consultation with NatWest, agreed to a further six-month extension.

This was conditional on a £100,000 non-refundable deposit, which has since been received.

READ MORE: Gang who stole car keys to vehicles worth £3.5m operated in Oxfordshire

Paul Appleton, joint administrator at Begbies Traynor, said: “A further extension to the date for completion was agreed, providing PharmaLearn with time to complete the transaction by June 2026 albeit we hope that the transaction will be completed well before then.

“Whilst this extension has required additional time and legal input, we remain of the view that, when compared with the available alternatives, continuing with the existing sale process is most likely to maximise the realisation for the benefit of the administration estate.

“Further work was undertaken to address the continued occupation of the property, including negotiations with Medlearn around an appropriate licence fee, as well as preparatory steps for issuing a potential notice to complete due to delays in progressing the execution process.

“Work will continue during the next reporting period to ensure all remaining matters are resolved and to bring the transaction to completion as promptly as possible.”

A pharmacist stocking shelves at a chemist (Image: PA)

Shortly after being taken over by the administrators, MedLearn Limited and Pharmalearn Limited vowed to buy the pharmacy.

Faiza Saleem is a director of both purchaser companies and is also connected to Nisar Ahmad, the sole director of Ahmeys, the administrators said.

Mrs Saleem is the wife of Faheem Ahmad, who resigned from Ahmeys in January 2025 as a director and from Medlearn in January 2024.

She is also the daughter in law of Nisar Ahmad, 69, the remaining director of Ahmeys.

The 22 staff who worked at Ahmeys were transferred to the new buyer via TUPE, transfer of undertakings (protection of employment), which eliminated the need for redundancies and wage arrears.

Ahmeys started to suffer financial difficulties due to working capital pressures and a slowdown in revenue, the administrators said in a previous report.

Touchload Limited, the company trading as Kings Oxford, was placed into administration by the High Court earlier this month.

Joint administrators Stephen Katz and Mr David Lawrence Birne of BTG Begbies Traynor (London) LLP were appointed on Thursday, April 9.

Public filings show Touchload remains listed as an active private limited company, with its most recent accounts covering the year to December 31, 2024 and its next set of accounts still due by October 1, 2026.

READ MORE: Oxfordshire to be hotter than Venice this week according to Met Office

Kings Oxford. (Image: Kings Oxford)

The administration order allows insolvency practitioners to take control of the business while options are explored, including a potential rescue, sale or managed wind‑down.

Kings Oxford, which operates from its St Joseph’s Campus in Temple Road, Cowley, and a city centre site in St Michael’s Street, offers GCSEs, A‑levels, foundation programmes and English language courses for UK and international day and boarding students.

Its current fee table shows A‑level programmes priced at more than £33,000 per year and GCSE courses in the low‑to‑mid £30,000s.

An Ofsted boarding inspection in May 2023 rated the overall experiences, progress, safeguarding and leadership at Kings Oxford as good.

In a detailed statement, a spokesperson for Kings Oxford linked the college’s financial pressures to the Government’s policy of imposing VAT on private school fees.

READ MORE: Private college with £30k fees in administration after High Court order

Kings Oxford. (Image: Kings Oxford)

The spokesperson said: “Since the Government’s imposition of VAT on private school fees Kings Oxford, along with many private schools in the UK, has experienced a significant drop in student enrolments over the past 18 months.

“The impact among international schools such as ours has been even more severe because parents of international students have multiple English‑speaking options for their children’s education abroad.

“It became clear that the most viable way of ensuring educational continuity for our students would be by being part of a larger, more stable educational group.

“We are therefore delighted that Kings Oxford is now part of the INTO University Partnerships group, a very well‑respected and successful operator within the international education sector.

“This will provide security for students currently studying in Oxford, as well as long‑term stability for Kings Oxford, which we are confident will continue to operate successfully in the city for many more years to come.”

READ MORE: Cotswolds pub unveils £95 seafood platter which needs three days’ notice

Kings Oxford. (Image: Kings Oxford)

Kings Oxford sits within Kings Education, which runs UK and US colleges and will now operate as a distinct brand inside the INTO University Partnerships group under a strategic deal announced this month.

INTO, which works with universities in the UK, US, Australia and elsewhere, said the tie‑up would create a “more resilient, more capable, and more globally connected organisation”, with plans to widen the range of programmes and locations open to students and expand Kings’ offer using INTO’s London facilities.

Mr Andrew Hutchinson, chief executive of Kings Education, said joining INTO marked “an exciting new chapter” and would “create new opportunities and outcomes for our students and partners”, while INTO chief executive Mr John Sykes described the agreement as an “important milestone” that would broaden study and progression routes for international students.

Insolvency notices advise anyone seeking further information about the administration of Touchload Limited to contact BTG Begbies Traynor in London.

Fime has launched FACT, a trust framework for transactions initiated by artificial intelligence agents. The system is intended to provide an independent layer for verifying agent-driven commerce.

The move comes as AI systems take on more autonomous roles in payments and digital transactions, shifting from assisting users to searching, negotiating and completing purchases on their behalf.

FACT, short for Framework for Agentic Commerce Trust, is designed to sit between AI systems and payment rails. It provides real-time verification, certification and oversight of transactions initiated by software agents rather than human users.

Fime is positioning the framework as a neutral model that can operate across payment platforms and networks. It says existing approaches are often embedded within specific payment schemes or technology ecosystems, limiting interoperability and raising concerns about conflicts of interest.

Trust layer

At the centre of the launch is a response to a growing problem in digital commerce: payment infrastructure was largely built for transactions authorised directly by people, not for decisions delegated to AI. That raises questions about what can be trusted when an autonomous agent chooses a product, agrees a price or completes a payment.

FACT is intended to address those concerns by verifying several parts of the transaction process, including whether an agent’s actions align with a user’s or organisation’s objectives, whether policy and compliance requirements are met, and whether the transaction can be audited.

The framework also includes what Fime describes as independent auditor agents intended to provide neutral trust verification. The aim is to generate machine-readable trust signals that participants across the payments chain can use when deciding whether to accept, authorise or review a transaction.

Merchants could use those signals when deciding whether to accept AI-initiated purchases. Banks and payment networks could use them as additional inputs for authorisation, fraud controls and risk assessment, while regulators could draw on them for greater visibility into autonomous transactions.

Industry shift

The launch reflects wider industry efforts to prepare payment systems for agentic commerce, a term used to describe transactions initiated and executed by AI agents with varying degrees of autonomy. Interest in the area has risen as generative AI and digital assistants evolve into systems that can take action rather than simply return information.

That shift introduces practical and governance issues for the financial sector. If an AI agent books travel, reorders goods, negotiates a subscription or selects a financial product, payment providers and merchants need ways to assess whether the instruction is legitimate, compliant and attributable.

These questions have implications for fraud prevention, liability and consumer protection. They also matter to regulators under pressure to ensure that automated commercial activity does not outpace oversight frameworks designed for more conventional digital payments.

Fime says FACT is intended to reduce the risk of the market splitting into closed, platform-controlled systems by offering a shared trust framework that can work across a changing payments landscape. The model builds on the company’s existing work in payments and digital identity standards, certification and implementation.

“Agentic commerce is not a future concept. It is already emerging across payment and digital ecosystems. But while we have built systems that allow AI to transact, we have not yet built systems that allow us to trust those transactions at scale,” said Lionel Grosclaude, Chief Executive Officer, Fime.

“FACT introduces the missing layer: a neutral, continuously verifiable trust infrastructure that enables autonomous commerce to grow safely, transparently and globally. This is critical to mass adoption of agentic commerce, so we are already engaging with the ecosystem and will share updates on pilots soon,” said Grosclaude.