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July’s European deal market rewarded scale, infrastructure, and operational depth. Five major transactions showed buyers paying substantial premiums for established networks, recurring revenue, specialist technology, and market positions that would take years to recreate.
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Youth skills policy increasingly depends on combining AI and judgement. World Youth Skills Day arrives as more than one million young people remain outside employment, education, or training.
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June’s US dealmaking concentrated around AI, platforms, infrastructure, and pipelines. SpaceX, Fox, Martin Marietta, Merck, and AbbVie led a month in which buyers paid for scarce routes to capability, scale, customer access, and future growth.
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June’s UK dealmaking became a sharper contest over listed-company value. Prologis, EQT, Castlelake, Ingredion, and Bridgepoint shaped a month of foreign approaches, take-private pressure, strategic consolidation, and outbound expansion, with boards testing whether public-market discounts should translate into control.
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Burnham’s devolution pitch has drawn cautious support from business leaders. Entrepreneurs and technology executives welcomed his focus on business rates, skills, and regional growth, but warned that delivery will depend on practical policy, local capacity, and digital infrastructure.
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Employment reform is reaching rotas, payroll, and manager decisions. The UK’s Employment Rights Act 2025 will test workforce planning, absence management, manager capability, and productivity in organisations that have relied on informal flexibility.
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Europe’s May M&A market favoured control, certainty, and strategic patience. The largest stories centred on contested assets, public-market discounts, private-equity pressure, and boards testing whether premiums were enough to justify surrendering independence.
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Fit note reform shifts attention to employers’ role in absence. New pilots could reshape return-to-work support, but only if employer involvement is clearly defined and practical enough to work across different roles, teams, and workplace settings.
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Britain’s jobs market is losing momentum at the margins. Vacancies have fallen, payrolls are weakening, and pay growth is close to stalling, with the strain showing first among smaller employers and in lower-paid sectors.
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Cyber crises demand more than technical teams and technical fixes. Dan Potter of Immersive argues HR, legal, and communications must be drilled alongside security staff, with rehearsed handoffs and role-swap exercises helping organisations respond faster, and with greater cohesion, when incidents hit.