The BOARD Brief Issue 2: Out-Invested

Hello,

Welcome to the second edition of The BOARD Brief, board-level intelligence for European private enterprise. We spend the week tracking what moved. You spend five minutes getting up to speed.

This week a London-listed Irish company agreed to go private, an Italian company borrowed €1.49 billion from its own government to buy American internet businesses, and a European space startup announced it is raising $300 million to challenge SpaceX, with the EU's own fund reportedly leading the round.

Our newsletter community keeps growing. Since last week's launch, we have 400+ subscribers, including European CEOs, investors and Non Executive Directors. Welcome to our new subscribers from KBC, Odgers Berndtson, Salto and many others.
 

BOARD MOVES
 

1. KKR and Energy Capital Partners are acquiring DCC Energy for £5.75 billion.

The board of Dublin-headquartered DCC has recommended a £65.25 per share cash offer from KKR and Energy Capital Partners, a 36% premium to DCC's three-month volume-weighted average share price before talks became public.

The recommendation came after weeks of wrangling with top shareholders including Aviva Investors and Fidelity International, who said the bid significantly undervalued the company.

Why it matters: DCC follows Schroders, Tate and Lyle and Mitie off the London Stock Exchange in 2026. The value of bids for London-listed companies is now 27 times greater than the value of new entrants this year. 

That gap is the story: if PE buyers consistently price your business more generously than public shareholders do, the pressure to accept will eventually arrive.

• Donal Murphy, CEO: "As a board, we wouldn't have recommended this if we didn't believe the majority of our shareholders are going to vote in favour of it"

• Jim Flavin, DCC founder and top shareholder: "I regard this price as totally inadequate"

• Shareholders vote in September, and the deal is not yet done
   

2. Bending Spoons has secured €1.49 billion in new debt, €500 million of it guaranteed by the Italian state.

The Milan-founded company, which listed on Nasdaq at the start of July, agreed a €500 million loan facility backed by SACE, Italy's export credit agency, wholly owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. 

It also agreed €495 million of additional term loan financing and a €490 million increase to its revolving credit facility. All facilities mature in March 2031.

Why it matters: SACE exists to support Italian exports and the international growth of Italian businesses. 

Bending Spoons acquires established digital products (AOL, Evernote, Vimeo, Eventbrite), rebuilds them with AI and keeps them permanently.

The Italian state is guaranteeing debt that will help a national champion buy the old American internet. Europe spent years worrying about American platforms buying its startups. Bending Spoons runs the other way, with a government guarantee.

• The model funds acquisitions with debt, and now has a five-year clock on €1.49 billion of it
• Davide Scarpazza, co-CFO: "We remain focused on deploying capital in a disciplined way to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns, primarily through acquisitions"
• As of March 2026, Bending Spoons' brands served more than 500 million monthly active users
   

3. AkzoNobel and Axalta have reworked the board terms of their $25 billion merger of equals after shareholders pushed for changes.

AkzoNobel, listed in Amsterdam, and Axalta, listed in New York, agreed an all-share merger of equals in November 2025 to create a global coatings company with about $17 billion in revenue and dual headquarters in Amsterdam and Philadelphia. 

Ahead of shareholder meetings on 5 August, both boards revised the governance terms for the combined company following extensive engagement with investors.

Two changes result. All directors will face annual re-election after an initial three-year period, brought forward from the five years first proposed. And during that initial period, the majority of Non Executive Directors needed to approve certain key decisions falls from 75% to two-thirds.

Why it matters: In a merger of equals, the board terms are where control is settled: how quickly directors answer to shareholders, and how large a bloc is needed to move on leadership. 

Investors did not contest the logic of the deal. They pressed on the guardrails, and both boards revised them before putting the merger to a vote.

• The lower threshold covers appointing and removing the CEO, Deputy CEO and CFO, appointing and dismissing directors, and amending the remuneration policy
• AkzoNobel shareholders will hold about 55% of the combined company and Axalta shareholders about 45%, with completion expected between late 2026 and early 2027
• The revisions need no change to the proposed Articles of Association, so the votes on 5 August proceed on the existing agenda
   

DATA POINT OF THE WEEK

Europe is being out-invested in the industries that define the next decade

What's new: China now leads global productive investment at $5.9tn a year, dominating the industrial base: 62 per cent of machinery, 49 per cent of electronics, and 53 per cent of all 2024 semiconductor investment. The US pulls more than half of global ICT and financial-services investment. The EU-27 leads no single sector outright.

Why it matters: Investment is where competitiveness is decided years before it shows up in market share. On current flows, Europe is specialising into the middle: strong enough to stay in the game, not dominant anywhere, and that gap compounds every year capital keeps concentrating elsewhere.

• Europe's best positions are professional services (26 per cent) and automotive, both contestable and cost-sensitive, neither a moat

• In the sectors that set the frontier, Europe is a minority investor: it trails China across the industrial base and the US across ICT (53 per cent) and financial services (51 per cent)

• McKinsey's own prescription is a board agenda, not a policy one: lift productivity and innovation, specialise in less cost-sensitive industries, and push policy to level the playing field

Source: McKinsey Global Institute, "Catalysing competitiveness: Global investment trends," 22 July 2026
 

Tristam Constant, co-founder of Agon, a British defence startup that launched this week with $30 million to build virtual battlefields where AI weapons train to fight: "We are in an AI arms race. Agon is developing the infrastructure that will ensure European defence can iterate and orchestrate systems at the pace of the threat."
 

IN BRIEF

• Multiverse Computing targets $570m Series C. San Sebastián deeptech company compressing AI models by up to 95%. Five times its previous valuation.

• A European startup building reusable space capsules to challenge SpaceX is in talks to raise $300 million, with the EU's own investment fund reportedly discussing one of its first investments.

• Enexis secures €500m EIB financing. Dutch grid operator expanding 4,600 kilometres of power lines across five provinces as data centre and energy transition demand surges.

• Dwelly raises $170m. London startup acquiring UK lettings agencies and migrating them onto AI platform. EQT Growth leading. KKR's Co-Head of European PE invested personally.

• CVC beats half-year expectations. €434m adjusted profit, €24bn returned to investors in twelve months, described as "another record" for realisations. 

  Bonus: Bain interviewed Rob Lucas, CEO of CVC, who discusses navigating one of the toughest fund-raising markets in decades and why Europe remains a compelling market for generating alpha. Listen here. 

Thank you for reading the second edition. Let us know what you think about the newsletter and what topics we should cover more. Reply to this email; we read every response.

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