BOARD on LinkedIn

Bullish, the Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange led by former NYSE President Thomas Farley, has agreed to acquire Equiniti, a UK-based regulated transfer agent processing $500 billion in annual payments and supporting over 20 million verified shareholders, in a $4.2 billion deal.

For Siris Capital Group, the US private equity firm that acquired Equiniti in 2021, this is a five-year hold ending in a significant exit. The deal includes approximately $1.85 billion of assumed debt and $2.35 billion in Bullish stock.

Thomas Farley, CEO of Bullish and former President of the New York Stock Exchange: "Tokenization is a once-in-a-generation shift in how capital markets operate." He added that the combination provides the "blue-chip issuer relationships" necessary to scale the transition.

As capital markets shift toward blockchain-based settlement, the absence of a regulated transfer agent built for the technology has been viewed as the primary hurdle for institutional adoption. Equiniti fills that gap, giving Bullish the regulated infrastructure it needs to bridge crypto and traditional capital markets at institutional scale.

The numbers behind Equiniti's position: $500 billion in annual payments processed, over 20 million verified shareholders supported. This is not a startup. It is a deeply embedded piece of UK financial market infrastructure changing hands to serve a new technology paradigm.

Jo Palmer, Heykel Jelassi, Natasha MacLeod, Clint Goodin, Andrew Peeler, Daniel Lotzof, Robin Paine, Ronnie Bates, Brian O'Neill, Jackie Marks, Mathew Clarke, Dan Kramer Show less

The National Basketball Association (NBA) has told investors it plans to commit more than $3 billion to launch a new European basketball league, and the names circling the opportunity include Blackstone, CVC Capital Partners, RedBird Capital Partners, General Atlantic, BlackRock, BC Partners and Oaktree Capital Management, L.P.

More than 120 expressions of interest were submitted. Several bids in the $500 million to $1 billion range were received, with some exceeding $1 billion. The NBA and FIBA have now entered the second phase of the sale process.

Under the proposed model, the NBA and FIBA would initially own 52% of the new league while participating teams collectively own the remaining 48%. An initial 12 permanent franchises would not face relegation, combining the financial stability of a US-style franchise system with elements of Europe's traditional sporting model. Over time, the NBA and FIBA's stake would dilute a new teams are added.

The NBA's $3 billion commitment would cover league marketing, operational support and early losses during the launch phase, protecting franchise owners from contributing additional capital in the competition's initial years. Annual guaranteed payments for every team and expanded prize money are also part of the revised offer, following concerns from some potential owners that revenue projections did not support the suggested team valuations.

Rob Lucas, Nikos Stathopoulos, Raymond Svider, Ben Shilliam, Lakshman Charanjiva, Chris Heyworth, David Held, Troy Ritter, Luke Charalambous, Piero Leporelli, Udaibir Banga, Matthew Chan, Edward Wertheim, Carlo Pirzio-Biroli, Khaair Morrison, Harveen Vavrouch, Antoniya Smilkova, FRM, Alexander Przewozniak, Hanro Rossouw Show less

Angelini Pharma, the pharmaceutical division of Italy's privately owned Angelini Industries, has agreed to acquire Florida-based Catalyst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for $4.1 billion, marking a landmark moment for one of Italy's most enduring family-owned groups and its boldest international expansion in a century of operation.

Italian state lender CDP Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, through its unit CDP Equity, is set to take a minority stake in Angelini Pharma to help fund the acquisition. Blackstone funds and other international partners are also providing support. BNP Paribas is acting as global coordinator and underwriter. This is not a single-source financing play, it is a deliberate architecture combining family capital, state support, PE backing and international banking to execute a transaction that would otherwise be beyond the reach of a privately held European company.

Sergio Marullo di Condojanni, CEO of Angelini Pharma, said the deal would establish the company as a "relevant global player in neurological rare diseases", expanding Angelini's scale and capabilities in a sector where it has deep European expertise.

Catalyst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. was founded in 2002, listed on Nasdaq in 2006, and specialises in treatments for rare neuromuscular and neurological diseases. Its shares have climbed more than 30% so far this year. Angelini is paying $31.50 per share in cash, a 21% premium to the April 22 price before deal speculation first emerged. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter.

This is the second major US acquisition by an Italian pharmaceutical company in two weeks — following Chiesi Group's $1.9 billion buyout of KalVista Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Italian pharma is systematically internationalising, using the US rare disease market as its entry point. Both deals share a common logic, European specialist pharmaceutical expertise meeting US capital markets and distribution infrastructure.

Massimo Marin, Rafal Kaminski, Agnese Cattaneo, Jessica Puleo, Fabio De Luca, Artem Ugarov, Michela Procaccini MD, Steve Guise, Marten Keuning, Enrico Giaquinto, Jennifer Bechan, CMP-HC, HMCC, Jaymie Rodems, Paul Friel Show less

Swedish private equity group EQT Group has submitted its third takeover offer for London-listed Intertek in less than a month, this time valuing the FTSE 100 product testing company at £8.93 billion, or $12 billion, at 58 pounds per share in cash. Intertek's board is reviewing the offer. EQT has time until May 14 to make a formal offer or walk away under UK takeover rules.

EQT's first approach at 51.50 pounds per share was rejected. A sweetened bid at 54 pounds was rejected. The third offer at 58 pounds has sent Intertek's shares to their highest level since March 2025, up more than 20% since EQT first disclosed its interest in mid-April. Yet the share price at 52.64 pounds is still trading below the offer price, suggesting the market believes the board will push back again or extract further value.

joe brent, analyst at Panmure Liberum, told Reuters: "EQT clearly wants to own this asset and seems to recognise the structural growth and the financial attractions of the business, which the market sadly did not."

EQT's own framing of the third bid is a direct challenge to Intertek's board: the improved proposal would deliver "accelerated cash value for Intertek shareholders, superior to possible outcomes associated with Intertek's standalone prospects."

The day after EQT's first approach, Intertek announced plans to split its two businesses, a move that looks, from the outside, like a board scrambling to demonstrate standalone value under pressure. Analyst Joe Brent said he does not believe a breakup is likely, noting the share price suggests otherwise.

The broader context: Intertek is one of a handful of FTSE 100 companies attracting PE takeover interest this year alongside DCC, Schroders and Beazley. UK listed industrials are being systematically targeted by European PE at a moment when valuations remain attractive relative to private market comparables and the new EU merger framework is creating appetite for larger, more ambitious transactions.

André Lacroix, Per Franzen, Laura Atherton, Kirk Lepke, Michiel Thiessen, Sophie Walker, Amelie Lindquist, Maria Lamprecht, Emil Askerud Sylvest, Alexandra Edlund, Hugo Tedroff, Tobias Küng, Lucy Blanchard MBA, Bertrand Mallet, Jeremy Jernigan, Glyn Garbett, Rich Byczek Show less

Giuseppe Castagna, CEO of BancoBPM, Italy's fourth largest bank, told analysts on Tuesday that the bank is well positioned to pursue M&A opportunities and is actively reviewing all options, including both large and small deals involving banks and fee-generating businesses.

In 2025 Banco BPM acquired fund manager Anima, strengthening its wealth management capabilities. It then successfully resisted UniCredit's unsolicited takeover approach. Now, with a renewed CEO mandate secured from shareholders, Castagna is signalling a shift from defence to offence.

The potential targets are named and specific. Castagna confirmed that both the Italian arm of Crédit Agricole CIB, BPM's largest shareholder, and Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena are natural options as merger partners given existing shareholder ties. BPM itself owns 3.7% of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena and last month played a key role in a shareholder vote that reinstated the Tuscan bank's ousted CEO.

Castagna was deliberate in his public messaging: "It is difficult to say which one will materialise, but we are reviewing all situations." On timing: "Let's wait and see to understand what the other parties are willing to do."

Teresio Testa, Adolfo Pellegrino, Fabio De Rosa, Luca Vanetti, Mattia Mastroianni, Edoardo Faletti, Tommaso Speggiorin, Salvatore Poloni, Federico Vitale, Davide Segantin, Daniela Antonini, Matteo Cidda, Mauro De Leo, Mattia Mastroianni, Giacomo Elena, Daniela Antonini Show less

The chief executives of ASML, Airbus, Ericsson, Mistral AI, Nokia, SAP and Siemens have published a joint opinion piece in major European newspapers, including Germany's Handelsblatt and Italy's Corriere della Sera, calling for Europe's AI regulations to be reduced and simplified, stronger industrial policy, and M&A rules that allow European companies to grow at scale.

The op-ed followed a direct meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Their message: "More than three years after the 'ChatGPT moment', Europe is still debating regulation, while others have long shifted focus to scaling AI in physical systems and robotics."

And on the competitive reality facing European companies today: "We face fragmented markets and subsidised rivals with very strong market penetration in the EU."

ASML is the world's only manufacturer of the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines that every advanced semiconductor depends on. Airbus is Europe's largest industrial company. SAP is Europe's most valuable software business. Siemens is one of the world's largest industrial conglomerates. Nokia is the backbone of European telecoms infrastructure. Together these seven companies represent hundreds of billions of euros in market value and employ hundreds of thousands of people across the continent.

The broader context makes this moment significant. This week alone Brussels published its first overhaul of merger rules in two decades. The EU extended the Digital Markets Act to cloud and AI. The European Commission is due to present its Tech Sovereignty Package on May 27. And now seven of Europe's most powerful industrial CEOs are telling Brussels publicly that it is not moving fast enough.

Christophe Fouquet, Roland Busch, Arthur Mensch, Börje Ekholm, Guillaume Faury, Christian Klein, Justin Hotard, Roger Dassen, Marco Pieters, Dr. Thomas Toepfer, Sabine Klauke, René Obermann, Lars Sandström, Ronnie Leten, Guillaume Lample, Timothee Lacroix, Marco Wirén, Dominik Asam, Jim Hagemann Snabe Show less

Prysmian, Europe's largest cable manufacturer, has announced it is actively exploring a €4 billion acquisition, comparable in size to its 2024 purchase of Encore Wire Corp, while simultaneously closing in on long-term deals with hyperscalers that could lift optical cable capacity by 40 to 50% and generate more than $5 billion in revenues over three years.

Prysmian shares hit a new record high on the news, rising as much as 6.7% on Tuesday.

Massimo Battaini, CEO of Prysmian: "We now have the financial strength to resume our M&A strategy." He added that deals could be announced within 12 months, and that the investment in hyperscaler capacity was set to exceed $1.2 billion over three years.

Adjusted EBITDA guidance for 2026 stands at €2.63 to €2.78 billion and Battaini has already signalled that guidance could be raised in the coming months. The M&A strategy and the hyperscaler agreements together are expected to drive performance above current targets.

Prysmian is the company that builds the physical infrastructure on which AI runs on. Every data centre being constructed across Europe and the US requires optical cables and Prysmian supplies them. At a moment when Nokia's CEO is warning that Europe lacks the infrastructure to compete in AI, and Blackstone is raising $1.7 billion specifically to acquire data centres, Prysmian is positioning itself as the critical infrastructure layer that everything else depends on.

Cristina Bifulco, Angelo Torcia, Stipe Pocrnja, Constantin Nistor, Detlev Waimann, Ferdinando Quartuccio, Srinivas Siripurapu, Andrea Kraus, Juancarlo Carrillo, Botansky Miroslav, Iuri Longhi, Guglielmo Guastella, Federico Buonocore Show less

eleQtron GmbH, a German deeptech scale-up developing trapped-ion quantum computers, has closed a €57 million Series A, the largest quantum computing funding round in Germany to date. The round was led by Schwarz Digits, the digital arm of Schwarz Gruppe, with participation from the European Innovation Council Fund, Earlybird Venture Capital, French VC firm Ankaa Ventures and development banks NRW.BANK and Hamburgische Investitions- und Förderbank (IFB Hamburg).

eleQtron already has an order backlog of more than €60 million, meaning it has more orders than the entire round it just raised. It employs over 100 people and partners with leading European research and computing centres. The funding will be used to build scalable production capacity and expand cloud-based access to its quantum systems.

Jan Henrik Leisse, CEO and co-founder of eleQtron: "Quantum computing is transitioning from a research-driven technology to an industrially usable infrastructure. With this funding, we are accelerating that transition and building systems that will solve real-world industrial problems."

Svetoslava Stoyanova Georgieva, Chair of the Board of Directors of the EIC Fund: "Quantum computing is entering a crucial phase of industrialisation. Companies like eleQtron, which combine scientific excellence with a clear focus on scalable systems, are essential to translating Europe's strengths into globally competitive technologies."

eleQtron's proprietary MAGIC technology enables highly precise and scalable control of qubits using microwaves, providing a path toward scalable quantum computers that does not require the elaborate cooling and controlled environments that have historically limited the technology's industrial applicability.

Schwarz Group, Europe's largest retailer by revenue, owner of Lidl and Kaufland, has made two significant European technology investments in a single week. €600 million committed to Cohere's Series E as part of the Aleph Alpha merger, creating a $20 billion transatlantic AI company. And now €57 million into eleQtron's quantum computing platform.

Serban Rebegea, Dr. Frédéric du Bois-Reymond, Julian Marx, Dr. Hendrik Brandis, Anja Bräuning, Paweł Należyty, Andreia Schrader, Ben Lakhssassi, Christian Melles, Julia Beck, Siham Al Dagher, Stéphane du Boispéan, Andreas Illenseer, André Wenclawiak Show less

The European Commission has announced it will extend the Digital Markets Act, the EU's landmark legislation curbing the power of Big Tech, to cloud services and artificial intelligence. Amazon and Microsoft are now under active investigation to determine whether they should be designated as DMA gatekeepers for their cloud computing services.

If designated, they will face significant obligations on pricing, interoperability, data portability and switching costs, obligations that will directly affect every European business running on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud.

Teresa Ribera, EU Competition Chief, was direct about the intent: "The DMA was designed to be future-proof and adapt to emerging challenges, for example in AI and cloud."

The Commission said the aim was to make cloud services and AI "fairer and more contestable" and will now examine whether certain AI services should be designated as virtual assistant core platform services. The current DMA already targets Alphabet Inc., Amazon, Apple, Booking.com, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft as gatekeepers across search, social media and app distribution. Cloud and AI are the next frontier.

Brussels loosened merger rules to allow European companies to build scale and compete globally. It opened a public consultation on those new rules. It warned through ESMA that AI is accelerating cybersecurity risks for European financial institutions. And now it is extending the DMA to the cloud and AI infrastructure that European businesses depend on.

Teresa Cunha, Arnaud Bonnet, Ekaterina Zaharieva, Niki Naska, Loredana Prijmireanu, Aoife Mangan (she/her), Lina Zakarauskaite, Boyko Blagoev, Yordanka Chobanova, Willy Kokolo, Yasser Machat, Luuk Borg, Pia Erkinheimo, Dr.sc. Natasa Besirevic, Radu Danu Show less

Last week, we covered KONE's landmark €29.4 billion acquisition of TK Elevator, one of Europe's biggest deals of the year and the highest valued company takeover in Finnish history. Today, there is an important context for every board following this story.

In 2019, Kone abandoned a €17 billion joint bid for TK Elevator with CVC Capital Partners, partly because of antitrust concerns. Last week, they announced a €29.4 billion deal to acquire the same asset. The difference is not just the price, but also the regulatory environment.

Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said it directly when the deal was announced: Europe needed more companies in the "global top tier."

Panu Laitinmäki, equity analyst at Danske Bank, told Reuters: "The EU's stance on major European mergers appears to be shifting, and I see better chances for the deal to go through now than a few years ago."

A combined Kone and TK Elevator would generate approximately €20 billion in annual sales, employ more than 100,000 people worldwide, and carry a market value of just under €49 billion, vaulting well ahead of Switzerland's Schindler Group at $36 billion and US-based Otis Elevator Co. at $30 billion. Europe would have a genuine global category leader in an industry it currently shares with American and Asian rivals.

But the path is not straightforward. A phase 2 EU antitrust probe, a full-scale investigation, is considered highly likely by analysts. Schindler has already said it will challenge the deal before regulators. Regulatory reviews are also expected in the US, UK and other markets. Kone may need to sell European assets, potentially including its German operations, to satisfy competition authorities. The Q2 2027 completion timeline has already been described by analysts as optimistic.

KONE CEO Philippe Delorme said he was confident the company would receive all necessary regulatory approvals by working with regulators.

This deal sits within a broader context: Brussels published its draft merger guidance for public consultation last week, marking the first overhaul of EU merger rules in more than two decades. The new framework explicitly allows companies to argue the benefits of innovation, resilience and sustainability as a counterweight to traditional competition concerns. Kone is betting those new rules will be supportive. The question is whether they will come into effect quickly enough to apply to this deal.

Ilkka Hara, Anna Herlin, Philipp Mueller, Sherry Vasa, Bora Gülan, Ranjan Sen, Jan Schönfeld, Thomas Hinnerskov, Sari Elonheimo, Fabienne Lesbros, Helena Mah, Simon Adair, Peter Lake, Amy Chen, José Eduardo Arellano Loyola Show less

Ares Management just reported record first-quarter fundraising of $30 billion, its strongest quarter ever, at exactly the moment when private credit has been facing its most intense period of negative headlines and industry scrutiny in years.

Assets under management jumped 18% to $644.3 billion from a year earlier. Uninvested capital reached $158.1 billion, up 11% year on year. The firm deployed $32.3 billion in the quarter, most of it into US and European direct lending, real estate and alternative credit strategies. Fee-related earnings jumped 26% to $464.4 million.

Michael Arougheti, CEO of Ares Management: "We are on track for another record year of fundraising as we continue to see broad-based investor demand across our platform. We also continue to see strong fundamental performance across our investment portfolios despite the volatile market environment."

The CFO Jarrod Phillips confirmed Ares is sitting on a record investment pipeline and is well-positioned to deploy capital opportunistically across its 2026 targets.

While fundraising in the private wealth channel has slowed across the industry, Ares' institutional investor base, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, has grown by 50% since 2022. Institutional investors commit for longer periods and behave more predictably during volatility.

Blair Jacobson, Mike Dennis, Richard Sehayek, Kevin Alexander, Mike Dennis, Stefano Questa, Julien Wolhändler, Edward Luff, Takahiro Hasunuma, Tobias Lideus, Ben Marks, Sofiya Kichkova, Raj Krishnan, CFA, Alyson Krause Show less

Erste Group, the largest lender in the EU's east, completed its €7 billion purchase of a 49% stake in Santander's Polish unit and rebranded it as Erste Bank Polska over the weekend. The Vienna-based bank is now the dominant banking force across Central and Eastern Europe.

Stefan Dörfler, CFO of Erste Group, told Bloomberg Television: "When it comes to domestic consolidation, we are ready anytime, anywhere. When it comes to bigger cross-border acquisitions, we are good where we are. We are now really focusing on a full integration of the Polish business."

Common equity tier 1 capital fell from 19.3% at year-end to 14.5% in the first quarter, a 460 basis point outflow to fund the Polish acquisition. That figure is already above the 14.25% management target set at the time of the deal, which means the balance sheet has absorbed the acquisition faster than expected.

Peter Bosek, CEO of Erste Group: "We definitely have the capacity to return to previous payout ratios. We will do this to the full extent, however, only if alternative capital allocation options do not offer higher returns."

Erste's Polish acquisition is the largest in the bank's history and marks a significant expansion of its footprint across Central and Eastern Europe, where it is already the dominant lender.

Manuel Gerber, Maurizio Poletto, Norbert Toth, Stefan Dörfler, Alexandra Habeler-Drabek, Bernhard Leder, Michał Gajewski, Peter Bosek, Bernhard Leder, Ana Botín, Héctor Grisi Checa, Begoña Morenes, Rahul Gupta, Andrew Cormack Show less