Daily Briefing Podcast

M&A

EQT raises its Intertek bid to £8.3 billion but the board rejects the £54-a-share offer, escalating the contest for the FTSE 100 testing and certification group

An £8.3bn FTSE 100 take-private triggers simultaneous public M&A, leveraged finance, and multi-jurisdictional competition clearance work.

International

Deutsche Telekom considers full merger with T-Mobile US to create a $300 billion global telecom holding company in a deal that would face regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic

A $300bn Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile merger triggers simultaneous EC, FCC, and CFIUS review — the full cross-border regulatory stack.

AI & Law

Freshfields and Anthropic announce joint development of AI legal tools as the Bank of England and UK Finance push banks to deploy AI cyber defences against frontier model threats

Freshfields co-developing AI tools with Anthropic shifts the firm from consumer to co-architect — and raises direct UK GDPR and EU AI Act exposure.

Capital Markets

Big Law capital markets practices play a stop-start IPO game as war-calm windows briefly open a historically deep pipeline of loss-making candidates worth $3 trillion

A $3 trillion loss-making IPO backlog means prospectus readiness work continues even when deal windows stay shut.

Banking & Finance

Blackstone Private Credit pays up sharply on $850 million bond offering as BDC funding costs widen 40 basis points from January, signalling structural stress in the private credit market

BCRED's 40bp spread widening in three months quantifies the funding cost squeeze now threatening private credit net interest margins.

Regulation

CMA invites comments on eBay's $1.2 billion acquisition of Depop from Etsy, marking the UK competition regulator's latest intervention in the online consumer marketplace sector

CMA scrutiny of eBay/Depop turns on whether second-hand fashion is a distinct market — the answer defines the entire competitive analysis.

Energy & Tech

Britain's electricity grid hits 98.8% zero-carbon record as gas falls to a historic low, creating new legal pressure on grid connection, storage contracts, and market rule frameworks

A 98.8% zero-carbon grid exposes Ofgem's balancing rules as structurally unfit for a renewables-dominated system.

Disputes

Oleg Deripaska launches new High Court claim against former business partner Vladimir Chernukhin in the latest chapter of a long-running oligarch feud

Sanctioned oligarchs litigating in London require OFSI licences — adding a regulatory dimension to every procedural step.