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Nearly half of UK business owners report increased risk appetite. New research from ECI Partners suggests optimism is returning across sectors, with technology and HR leading the way. While cost pressures persist, the findings point to strong interest in private equity and international expansion.
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Ofcom contacts xAI over Grok’s image-generation capabilities. The UK regulator is investigating claims that the AI tool can create sexualised images of children and non-consensual explicit images of women, potentially breaching the UK’s Online Safety Act.
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Senior lawyer hiring surged in City law firms in 2025. Employment rose above 5% as London firms hired 668 partners, a 21% increase. US firms led the trend, focusing on private capital teams, with high demand expected to continue.
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December’s US M&A docket favoured scale, infrastructure, and control decisively. Netflix’s $82.7bn Warner Bros. deal set the tone, while IBM paid up for Confluent’s data-streaming backbone. ServiceNow’s $7.75bn Armis move underscored platform-driven security consolidation. Private equity returned via Clearwater Analytics, and Alphabet’s Intersect purchase highlighted power as an AI constraint.
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European M&A ended 2025 with disciplined, strategically focused December deals. Orange’s €4.25bn move for full control of MasOrange set the tone. Sanofi and Sweden’s Sobi paid for pipeline clarity, Harman bought German ADAS capability, and Prada’s Versace acquisition underlined that European luxury consolidation remains firmly alive.
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The U.S. consumer watchdog faces paralysis as funding cuts bite. A judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore payments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, halting its attempt to defund the agency as tensions over America’s regulatory future intensify.
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December reshaped UK dealmaking, from energy divestments to takeovers worldwide. BP’s Castrol carve-out set the tone, while Smiths, Petrofac, SolGold, and International Personal Finance highlighted continued appetite for UK assets. The month revealed how capital is being deployed — selectively, strategically, and with little tolerance for ambiguity.
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John Carreyrou files a federal lawsuit against six AI developers. The complaint alleges the companies used copyrighted books, including his own work, without consent to train their chatbots — opening a new front in the industry’s deepening legal battle over training data.
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HMRC is intensifying its scrutiny of fast growing UK companies. Francesca Titus, barrister and white-collar crime partner at McGuireWoods, warns that expanding enforcement powers, AI-led investigations, and new criminal offences are raising the stakes. For scale-ups, proactive compliance is now essential — before HMRC comes knocking.
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Gold and silver broke all-time records on Monday as investors priced in 2026 rate cuts, capping a historic year for precious metals amid slowing global growth and renewed safe-haven demand.